


Parallax

by jane_x80



Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Episode: s02e23 Twilight, Episode: s03e01 Kill Ari Part I, Episode: s03e02 Kill Ari Part 2, M/M, Magical Tattoos, Parallel Universes, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-17 09:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21052163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: One afternoon, Gibbs witnesses what happens on that fated rooftop where Ari Haswari tries to kill Kate, but Tony pushes her out of the way, saves her life, and takes the bullet instead. From one second to the next, Tony is laid out on the rooftop. Dead.So why does Gibbs find Tony in his apartment later that night? And why does this Tony swear so much and have so many tattoos and piercings? Gibbs will have to figure out what is going on here.This is an AU where one Tony dies on the rooftop via a bullet meant for Kate, and in a parallel universe, a different Tony does the same thing, taking the bullet meant for Kate and is catapulted into this universe where their Tony had been killed. This other Tony is blasted into a different parallel universe, one where their Tony was dead, and magic is not a known thing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was one that refused to stop bugging me until I sat down and wrote it, so here we go! Another AU and this one includes parallel universes and magic and tattoos and piercings!
> 
> As always, I send a million thank yous to my amazing beta [jesco0307](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesco0307/pseuds/jesco0307) for all of her work to help me make this story so much better. Thank you so much for all your help! You are the absolute best! <3
> 
> And of course, huge thanks go out to jilly james [ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jilly)/[jilly's web site](http://jillyjames.com/)! She chose my summary and made such amazing and gorgeous artwork to go with it! OMG!! Thank you! Jilly also suggested the title and I'll talk about that more at the end of the story so I don't give every single thing away in the very beginning of this story. ;)
> 
> Please note that this story is part of the 2019 [NCIS Big Bang challenge](https://ncis-bang.livejournal.com/63350.html). As this challenge is allowing longer stories to post over two consecutive days this year, I will be exercising this option and will be posting the story on Wednesday 16 October 2019 and Thursday 17 October 2019. This story is complete. There are six chapters altogether.
> 
> Also, there will be spoilers (of sorts) for Twilight, and Kill Ari Parts 1 and 2. Some of the dialogue in this story was borrowed from the episodes, but I changed so many things, reassigned lines to different people, edited it, and added to it in order to make this story work the way I wanted it so I won't mark the lines from canon. I will provide a link to the episode transcripts at the end of the story.
> 
> I know that it's tagged Major Character Death but I hope you guys still give this a chance. Also, I did tag the story as Major Character Death and even though it's a little funky, it's still there. So please be warned.
> 
> Let's get started!

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Ch1.jpg)

**Chapter One**

“I’m out,” Tony announced, ejecting his empty clip, after the firefight on the rooftop.

“Me too,” Kate concurred, checking her rifle.

Gibbs was handing out spare ammo to Tony when Kate yelled “_Shooter_!” and threw herself in front of Gibbs, right as a gunshot sounded, coming from behind the door to the roof, and she landed on the floor with a grunt. Together, Tony and Gibbs then put enough holes in the shooter to end him.

“Kate,” Gibbs rushed over to Kate’s prone body and turned her onto her back. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving. Tony and Gibbs pulled her jacket open efficiently, and both men let out a sigh of relief when they saw that the bullet was lodged in her Kevlar, and not in her body.

“You OK?” Tony asked her.

“Ooowww,” she groaned, not moving to get up. “I just got shot at point blank range, DiNozzo. What do you think?”

“You’re not gonna go to Pilates class tomorrow?” Tony quipped and he saw Gibbs smiling at his joke, and cheered inwardly. He still had it, because Gibbs still couldn’t hide his amusement at Tony’s snark, despite his usual stoicism.

Kate moaned in pain, and Tony and Gibbs helped to pull her upright, even though she was groaning. Tony could feel his own chest hurt in sympathy, too. He knew the pain of taking a bullet, even if there was Kevlar involved. One time he’d even fractured a rib due to the force of the bullet’s impact on him, even though he’d worn a bullet proof vest. But the damage would have been far worse without the Kevlar, so all in all, he would take the bruise or the fractured rib any day over a bullet in his chest.

Gibbs was brushing Kate down, practically running his hands all over her, looking her over, and Tony told himself that he wasn’t jealous of the attention. Nope. Not even a little bit. Yeah. Not jealous at all.

“Protection detail’s over, Kate,” Gibbs told her.

Not wanting to be outdone, Tony jumped in, “You did good,” he smiled, praising her.

And there was that little smile on Gibbs’ face again which absolutely did not make Tony’s heart stutter. “For once, DiNozzo’s right,” Gibbs was carefully not looking at him, but Tony could feel himself puffing up with pride and gloating on the inside. Because _Gibbs_ thought he was right. Tony was going to ignore the ‘for once’ bit because fuck that, Tony was _always_ right, goddamnit. Or close to being right. He was going to take the compliment and not second guess himself. At least not right now.

And Kate? Kate was blushing with pleasure, and giving that little laugh that meant that she was pleased but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Tony was happy for her, and happy that she was alive, but again, Gibbs was still carefully not meeting Tony’s eyes. What the fuck was up with the bastard now? Tony was sure this just wasn’t going to turn out well for him somehow. No matter what happened next.

“Wow, I thought I’d die…” Kate was talking but Tony couldn’t pay attention to her. There was a sharp stab of almost pain in Tony’s chest. An urgency overcame him. Like a gut feeling. That he _had_ to act. He didn’t know how he knew it, but something was going to happen. Something really, really, _really_ bad. And it was up to him to stop it. Without quite knowing what he was doing or why he was doing it, he immediately stepped in front of Kate, shoving her aside, ignoring Gibbs’ questioning look. Yeah, so _now_ he wanted to look at Tony? Whatever. Tony couldn’t pay attention to him right now.

“…before I ever heard…” Kate was still speaking, ignoring the fact that Tony had just shoved her.

And then Tony was hit hard, he felt like his neck and his head were exploding, as if he was shattering into a million pieces, and the agony was indescribable. He felt himself falling and everything went black.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tony DiNozzo opened his eyes. Rain was falling in vertical sheets right on top of him. He was lying on his back, looking up at the sky, and water was flowing into his now opened eyes. With how completely unconscious he’d been, he was lucky he hadn’t drowned in the deluge.

He slowly sat up, trying to ignore the rain and the throbbing in his head. What the fuck happened? He remembered stepping in front of Kate and then… nothing. He looked around and saw that he was still on the rooftop.

Alone.

Where the hell was everyone?

He looked down on himself. Everything seemed to be intact. No bullet holes. No blood. Everything was as it should be. He had his gun, his badge, his wallet, Kevlar and tactical gear still on. He was just soaked through, which was unsurprising, given how heavily the rain was falling. He pulled his phone out but there was no signal. After holding it up in a futile effort to get some bars, he was forced to give up. He didn’t want to get his phone completely waterlogged, so he put it back into his pocket. He wiped a tired hand over his face, and tried not to feel the sting of betrayal, that Gibbs and Kate and McGee had just left him to wake up alone on the rooftop. Surely they could have troubled themselves to get the EMTs to take a look at him, or even take him to the hospital. Something other than just leaving him to possibly just die on that roof.

Slowly, he dragged himself up to his feet, his spine cracking as he straightened up. He went into the building and headed down to the street, happy that at least he wasn’t being rained on anymore. On his way down the many, many flights of stairs, he had to stop to cough and hawk out horrible phlegm – stupid pneumonic plague – several times and by the time he got down to the ground floor, he was winded. OK scratch that. He was almost done in just by walking down those stairs in the condition he was in. He panted and wheezed, looking around as he caught his breath.

There seemed to be no sign of NCIS ever being here. No NCIS van. No car. No yellow crime scene tape. Nothing. And no one. Tony was alone in the rain and they’d apparently hauled all of the dead bodies and cleared the crime scene already. All the while, he was lying dead to the world on the roof by himself. Wasn’t that just the nicest thing that they could have done? He snorted in disgust. Gibbs probably thought this was funny. Or thought Tony deserved this. Well, fuck him.

Tony checked his phone again, and strangely, there was still no signal. He’d thought that McGee had boosted all their phones’ signals to help reduce the inadvertent breaking of Rule #3, but just this once, Tony felt that Gibbs was just going to have to forgive him for not calling in right away. The man should have taken him home if he was so concerned about anybody’s well being. Tony was too tired to care right now.

He sighed, pulled his jacket collar up, and hunched into the rain. He was going to walk until he could hail a cab, and go straight home, work be damned. Ari be damned. He was cold and miserable, and his chest was hurting with every breath that he took. Stupid lung issues. He was about ready to just take the rest of the week off, since he was already scheduled to be on medical leave. He couldn’t wait until he was all better again because he was really not feeling too good right now. Luckily, he only had to walk a few blocks before a cab took pity on him and stopped to pick him up despite the fact that he was doing a great impression of a drowned cat.

Finally, Tony was able to limp into his apartment. He slammed his door shut, and in the dark tossed his keys into the bowl by the door. He let out a long breath that was both a groan and a sigh of relief. He was home. Back in his sanctuary. He wasn’t quite sure what the hell had happened on that rooftop but he was tired. So tired that he couldn’t even feel his wards enveloping him as soon as he’d closed the door, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been so tired that that had happened. Right now his head was absolutely _killing_ him, and every single part of his body hurt. He didn’t know where the hell the rest of the team had disappeared to, thanks a lot Kate for not waiting for the guy who only saved her life, nothing much, Kate. No need to thank him all at once or anything, Kate. But did she have to just leave him there to die? What an asshole she was being. But yeah, he’d come to all alone on that rooftop, no one there, and it was fucking _raining_.

He was as weak as a kitten, absolutely nothing in the tank, and he wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on. His phone still wasn’t getting any signal and he didn’t even have enough energy to get himself dry, so he didn’t want to try anything too sophisticated as fiddle with his phone. But now that he was home, he really hoped that everyone had gotten home safe. Gibbs had to be foaming in the mouth for Tony not going back to work and finishing his paperwork, but he’d just taken a hell of a whammy and the least Gibbs could have done was send him to the hospital. Instead of leaving him to rot in the rain on an empty rooftop. He was barely recovered from getting the fucking pneumonic plague, should still be on sick leave and everything, and they had just left him on the roof after being whammied but good? Those motherfuckers.

A worrying thought struck him. Shit. Maybe _they_ weren’t OK. Maybe they hadn’t meant to leave him on the roof, but didn’t have a choice? God, he really hoped that everyone was OK and Ari hadn’t just kidnapped everyone else, leaving him to pick up the pieces all by himself.

And now that that had occurred to him, Tony couldn’t help but worry about his team. Maybe he should have gone back to work, never mind the fact that he felt like crap and his head was seriously about to explode, it hurt so much. Whatever it was that hit him, it packed a punch. It was probably Ari, trying to get them from another rooftop. Hopefully Gibbs had been able to capture that fucker and wasn’t tied up somewhere being tortured by Ari. Tony was tired of being on the defensive. It was time to gain the upper hand. He needed to get to his land line to call Gibbs to get a sitrep, and if he couldn’t get a hold of his boss, he would have to drag himself back to work to see if he needed to go hunt Ari down and singlehandedly rescue the rest of his team.

But after he got out of these wet clothes, though.

He unstrapped the bulletproof vest off of himself, the sound of velcro being undone loud and angry in his quiet apartment. He didn’t want to track water through his pristine apartment but it couldn’t be helped. He flipped the light switch and started trudging towards his room but after a couple of steps, he had to stop and gawk at the sight. The rooms in the apartment were laid out exactly the way his was, so he had to be in his apartment, with the big wall of windows, the lovely hardwood flooring, and the walls a soothing and nondescript shade of beige to combat the mountains of migraine inducing orange walls at work. But the furnishings were completely different. There was a wide screen TV and a ridiculous amount of movies on his bookshelves, which yes, of course he Tony DiNozzo had a ton of movies and a big screen TV, but why was it on _that_ wall instead of over there by the… he turned to look and jumped. Why the hell was there a baby grand in his living room? His mother’s piano, it looked like. Why the fuck was his mother’s fucking piano in his living room? What goddamned freak show was he coming home to?

He growled in frustration. He didn’t know what Abby must have gotten his little McGeek to do, but they’d absolutely pranked him and pranked him good. He didn’t know how they’d gotten his mother’s piano out of storage and into the apartment, and changed everything around without him knowing, and that really pissed him off, but whatever. He was too tired and hurting too much to figure it out right now. Retaliation and retribution would have to come later.

Besides the piano was a low blow. He’d loved that thing, and he’d loved his mother. It was the only real thing of hers that he had left, and he couldn’t bear to look at it on a daily basis. It was why he’d put it in storage. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to track the damned thing down after Senior had hocked it, god knows how long ago. But once he’d bought it back, he found that he couldn’t face the memories of his mother and how he’d failed her on a daily basis. Thus the move to put it in storage.

How could McGeek and Abby have brought this painful memento of his very first failure into his apartment like this? Abby, at least, was supposed to know better. But that was really something he would have to deal with later.

Feet squelching in his boots, he trudged to his phone, which was still on the wall by the doorway to the kitchen, and he tried not to gawk at what Abby had done to it. What the fuck had she done to his kitchen? Beautiful, sleek, top of the line gadgets lined his countertop. An espresso machine, an artisan stand mixer, a toaster oven, a toaster, another regular coffee machine. But they all looked expensive. And they were all matte steel, matching the huge refrigerator. His kitchen was sleek and looked professionally done. Why the hell had Abby or whoever the hell replaced all of his stuff? Where was all of his usual equipment? He’d specialized his kitchen to be able to help him hone his talents and as far as he could see, nothing was left of his things. Where were his mismatched bowls and pots of herbs and special little plants? He had a valuable shitload of rare plants that he’d cultivated for years for his own purposes and he was going to be pissed if Abby had disposed of them.

Tony growled under his breath, hoping that he would be able to confront whoever it was who had decimated his things and fucking pulverize them for this. _After_ they put everything back the way it was supposed to be. Mother. Fucker.

Angrily, he picked up the land line and dialed Gibbs’ cell from memory. He didn’t know how it was possible, but his head was hurting even more now.

“Who is this?” Gibbs answered the phone, his tone unmistakably that of barely controlled fury.

“Well, hello to you, too, Boss,” Tony rolled his eyes, relieved that Gibbs sounded normal and not kidnapped or killed or anything. But the unfriendly tone greeting him seemed unnecessary. Nice. This was what he got for calling Gibbs even before he took his wet clothes off. Fuck that shit. The next time Tony thought that the team had been kidnapped by a terrorist, he would absolutely change out of his wet clothes, maybe even take a hot shower first, before he checked in to see if they were OK. Let’s just see if he would ever be this concerned about his team again so as to neglect his own well being.

“Who the hell is this and why are you calling from DiNozzo’s number?” Gibbs was seriously upset now.

“Calm the fuck down, Boss. It’s me, of course.”

“_Who is this_?” Gibbs was yelling now.

“For fuck’s sakes, Gibbs! A couple of hours and you’ve totally forgotten me? It’s me, your Very Special Senior Field Agent. I’m fucking Anthony D DiNozzo, Jr! Do you want me to spell my name? Do you want my badge number? My social security number? _What_?” Tony couldn’t help but explode. All these years they were together, on and off, and Gibbs had _already_ forgotten him? What the everliving hell was going on?

“_DiNozzo_!?” Gibbs was softer now, but he sounded puzzled. Maybe even a little confused.

“_Yes_,” Tony huffed out a sigh of pure frustration, and his head throbbed even worse. “Look, I’ve got a killer headache and I thought Ari had kidnapped you guys. My cell is shot to hell and I just got home. Why the fuck did you leave me passed out on that rooftop all by myself?”

“_What_?” Gibbs somehow made that one syllable sound puzzled, angry, and hurt all at once.

Tony sighed and rubbed his forehead, trying to soothe the ache. He tried to will the headache away but it wasn’t working. He was too depleted from whatever Ari must have hit him with.

“Look, Boss. Are you and Kate OK?” he asked, trying to keep his tone civil.

“Yeah. Of course. We’re fine. You… you took the shot meant for Kate.”

“Yeah, I remember needing to do that…” Tony stretched his neck and continued to rub his forehead. “Is she OK? And Probie? He’s OK, too?”

“We’re all fine,” Gibbs answered, his tone careful now.

“Well, then, if everyone is fine, then I’m just going to take a long, hot shower, take some aspirin and go the fuck to bed.”

“Where are you?”

“Seriously? Where else would I be? At my apartment.”

“At whose apartment?”

“_My_ apartment.” Was Gibbs going deaf in his old age?

“DiNozzo’s apartment?”

“That is what I said, Gibbs. What the fuck is wrong with you? Just because I told you I wasn’t going to allow you to use me as a fuck toy anymore, doesn’t mean that you can just fucking ignore me and leave me on the goddamned roof to die. What if I couldn’t absorb whatever it was Ari must have tried to whammy on Kate? I’m not fucking invincible, you know.”

“You’re Tony DiNozzo. And you’re at your apartment?” Gibbs asked him again.

“Yes, motherfucker. Where else would I be? Here or work. Those are your only choices,” Tony rolled his eyes even though Gibbs couldn’t see him, but he knew Gibbs would be able to feel it. “It’s not like you let any of us have a life outside of work.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re not my fuck toy,” Gibbs objected.

“You’re fucking right, I’m not. Not anymore, and not ever again. So don’t even think about going down that road. We are so fucking _done_, this time. I mean it. Touch me one more time and I’ll cry rape so loud your head will spin.”

“_What_?”

“You heard me.”

“Uh-huh. OK,” Tony could tell that Gibbs was plotting something and he was just done with it by then.

“Fine, then. I’ll see you tomorrow. Or maybe the day after because I have to tell you, my head is just killing me. I need to sleep for a long time so I can recharge. Whatever Ari hit me with today sucked,” Tony couldn’t help the whine in his voice at that point, because fuck, his head really hurt. Tony had a high tolerance for pain, but this was ridiculous. “And if you talk to Kate, tell her I really don’t appreciate her leaving me unconscious on that fucking roof after I took a big hit for her. She’s lucky I’m too tired to do anything to her right now. But once I’ve had some sleep, tell her to grow eyes on the back of her head because I’ll be gunning for her.”

Tony was about to rant even more when a huge coughing jag overtook him. He coughed and coughed and struggled to breathe, and his chest exploded in pain and every cough caused an agonizing throb in his head. He wheezed loudly as he tried to suck in oxygen and get over the coughing. Fucking rain and fucking still in his wet clothes and tactical gear. It was past time for him to take a hot shower. Fuck, he should reward himself with a nice, relaxing, and most importantly, _hot_ bath.

“You OK?” Gibbs’ voice finally filtered into Tony’s consciousness, once he was panting and breathing shallowly instead of trying to actively cough up a lung. He could not wait until his lungs were healed because this shit sucked. He could tell it must have sounded pretty bad because Gibbs actually sounded concerned now.

He cleared his throat a few times, muffling smaller coughs and wiping phlegm onto his soaked sleeve. “Fine,” he rasped. “I’m just cold and wet. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” He moved to hang up the phone.

“Wait!” the urgency in Gibbs’ voice made him hesitate.

“What?” Tony put the phone back to his ear.

“You’re OK? Really?” Gibbs asked.

“I’m fucking fine. I’m soaking wet and Ducky’ll kill me if I come down with a cold now. He’ll send me back to the hospital and nobody wants that, not when Ari is still running around, free as a bird,” Tony couldn’t help but snarl the last bit out. “I assume he’s still out there?”

“Yeah,” Gibbs confirmed it.

“Fucking great.” Tony sighed. “I’ll be in early tomorrow and you can fill me in on what I missed.” And he hung up the phone without warning.

He’d been doing that to Gibbs lately, giving him a taste of his own medicine. See how he liked it when people did this to him, since Gibbs was always the one getting the last word and hanging up abruptly. Now that Tony finally put his foot down and refused to let Gibbs keep screwing him over physically as well as metaphorically, he was finding it quite liberating to adopt some of Gibbs’ own annoying habits. He was tired of being the fuck toy at home and the whipping boy at work. This time, Gibbs would have to figure out why the hell Tony was so upset all by himself. He wasn’t going to keep being the one to remind Gibbs how to be human in public. Plus, he was done keeping the team happy at his own expense. He was just done. He was definitely going to ask Morrow for a transfer out of the MCRT once they found and neutralized Ari Haswari. He really did not want to keep running around the hamster wheel of the MCRT because it just wasn’t adding up to anything much for him anymore. He’d made a name for himself in the DC alphabet soup, being the one guy who had lasted working for Gibbs for four years now. He was competent and he knew his stuff. A lot of stuff. People feared him and his own special talents as well, now, so even if Morrow didn’t want to let him leave the MCRT or didn’t find him something else that suited him at NCIS, he was ready to jump ship and try his luck elsewhere. He’d already stayed at NCIS two years longer than any of his other Police Department jobs. It was fucking long enough.

Besides, if he was going to start looking around for something more upwardly mobile, he needed to put himself out there now while he was still young enough to embrace change, but yet old enough that his resume was pretty impressive. He wanted to be seen as experienced, but not too old, and young enough to be hungry for more than just being Gibbs’ Senior Field Agent for all time.

Now that Tony was no longer in Gibbs’ thrall, he wanted more than the little slice of the pie that he’d been given at NCIS and told to be happy with. He wanted the world. He wanted to learn more, do more. Serve his country better. Fulfill his own personal goals. Discover the extent of his potential. Whatever craptastic thing you wanted to say, he needed to move on away from Gibbs and away from the MCRT.

He couldn’t stay with the MCRT. Mainly he was done with his team because he was done being with Gibbs. He didn’t even know why he’d stuck around and taken all that abuse, and lack of commitment, and fear of expressing love and tenderness from the man. Of course he understood that Gibbs came with baggage, but most people wanted to learn how to let go of the baggage or live with it in such a way that it didn’t negatively affect their futures. But Gibbs wanted to hold on to his baggage for dear life and refused to let it go. He used it like a weapon, holding Tony’s entire life hostage at times. Tony didn’t expect Gibbs to forget or stop loving Shannon and Kelly, but he was done living as if he was a yoyo on the end of a string. One day Gibbs wanted him in his life and in his bed, and the next, he thought that Tony was the instrument of Gibbs’ betrayal to his dead family. Tony definitely had plenty to add if he ever got together with Gibbs’ three ex-wives again for their random bitching sessions, and this time he would definitely be a full ex, even though Gibbs hadn’t bothered to marry him.

Because yeah. He was done with all that. And the best way to get over Gibbs and his stupid shit was to leave the fucker in the dust. It was the only way Tony would be able to survive this.

He rubbed his forehead and sighed, peeling off his sodden jacket, and his Kevlar vest as he walked to the bathroom. He disarmed, putting his guns and knives and other goodies on the closed toilet seat. He tossed his wet clothes in a pile in a corner of the bathroom and started running a bath. He poured in his favorite bath oils – which, thank goodness, Abby or whoever had rearranged his apartment hadn’t thought to replace – and just the aroma of it comforted him. He shivered and decided to throw some clean towels in the dryer so that he would have warm towels to dry himself with after his bath, so he did that while the bath filled up. He also poured himself a huge glass of wine and put Ella Fitzgerald on, speakers piping the music through the apartment, including the bathroom. At least whoever had messed with his apartment seemed to have left his music collection intact.

Finally, the bath was ready for him. He took all of the rings off his fingers and frowned when he couldn’t find the special chalice he’d made to house them while he bathed, so he ended up putting them in the glass he kept in the bathroom for tooth brushing purposes. The metal rings clinked as they dropped into the glass, little metallic sounds that was a faint echo of gunshots. Fuck. Tony was getting maudlin. It was time to get in the tub and relax.

Naked, Tony looked at himself in the mirror. He was pale, paler than he should be, and the circles around his eyes were so dark they looked like bruises. He wasn’t recovered from the pneumonic plague. He sniffled a little, and gently touched the _wuivre_, the symbol of protection that went around his neck, declaring his vocation of warrior and protector to the world. The blue of it was vibrant, almost electric, even though he was depleted. He smiled to himself, breathed a prayer of thanks to the gods for protecting him. He was still their warrior and he’d dedicated his life in service of others, getting the endless serpents tattooed around his neck the day after he’d run into a burning building in Baltimore all those years ago, figuring that he would need extra protection if he were to keep doing dangerous things to save others.

He might not have saved everyone on that fateful day, but he had managed to save one person. One person who wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t risked his life. It would always be his biggest regret, his inability to save the boy’s sister, and one day, maybe he would be able to forgive himself for that. But ever since then, he’d worked hard to never be as helpless as he had been that day. To never not have another option or a Plan B with which to take action. Today, if he were confronted with that very same situation, he would have other tools in his arsenal to help him save the girl. And this tattoo was just one of them.

He sighed, still fingering the serpent’s head, right by his jugular, closing his eyes and sending a silent prayer out into the universe, hoping that the girl forgave him for being untrained and inadequate back then. For failing to save her. Then he lowered himself into the hot water, immersed up to his neck, and slowly his muscles relaxed. His head was pillowed on a towel, his eyes closed. Fuck, he loved this old claw footed bathtub of his. He was able to fit in perfectly, even though he wasn’t a small man. Already, he could feel the congestion in his chest loosening up. The hot water was helping him feel better.

He sighed, sipped his wine, and tried to clear his mind to see if ideas would flow into it. Obviously, he needed to find Ari and stop him. He also needed to figure out how Mossad fit into all this. And finally, he needed to have a serious talk with Morrow on an exit strategy out of the MCRT.

He closed his eyes, resisting humming along with Ella only because he didn’t want to start coughing again, and just let the events of the last day wash over him and out of him. It was a good time and a good place to meditate, he thought. It was the last thought in his aching head, before sleep stole over him.

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Cover_1k.jpg)


	2. Chapter 2

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Ch2.jpg)

**Chapter Two**

After what had happened on the rooftop, Gibbs was inadequately trying to drown his sorrows with a single mug of bourbon in his basement, a stolen moment at his apartment while working the case that was now the highest priority of his entire career. Tony, that fucking self-sacrificing idiot had stepped in front of a bullet for Kate. And now… Now Gibbs was left to hunt down yet another motherfucker who had taken away someone Gibbs loved. Not that he’d ever told Tony that. Of course not. They had only been co-workers. Boss and subordinate. Sometimes they were friends outside of work, but Gibbs wasn’t an easy person to be around or to get to know, or, god forbid, be friends with, and even though Tony had come around to eat with him and sass him while he worked on his boat, he’d refused to allow Tony to get any closer than that. And the worse part about it all was that Tony had known that Gibbs was holding him at arm’s length, had tried to push to be closer to him, and Gibbs had rebuffed his every offer of friendship.

Why? Because Gibbs couldn’t bear to lose someone else that he loved. Not that he’d really _loved_ Tony. He’d refused to even allow himself that luxury. He could have. If he’d just loosen up a little, let go of his iron control enough to get closer to the man, he could have easily fallen in love with Tony, but he’d resisted those laughing green eyes, the sharp wit, and the adorable dimples. But even though he wasn’t in love with the man, he’d cared about him. Deeply. Deeper than he’d realized, if he were to be honest with himself. Maybe he had even loved Tony and loved him for everything that he had been as a person, and everything that he could have been to Gibbs.

But yet, keeping Tony away from his heart hadn’t really helped, had it? Here Gibbs was, sitting in his basement, alone, trying to let bourbon help him forget the fact that he’d had the chance to be happy again, and he’d just let it slip through his fingers. Because he was too chicken shit to face his fears and grab on to life and love, or whatever else Tony might have wanted to offer him. Now, even despite keeping Tony away from him and refusing to allow himself to fall in love with the man, here he was, nursing a bourbon and another broken heart. What he would give for a second chance. To not have this regret added on to his already heavy load of regrets.

But then. That weird phone call from someone who claimed to be Tony had sobered him right up. Not that he’d had the time or the luxury to get truly shitfaced yet. He was going to have to save that for after he’d put Ari down. He was only home to change into clean clothes and have one drink before he went right back to work. He had a lot to do to catch Tony’s murderer. Except he’d received a call from someone who sure as hell sounded like Tony which was impossible. It couldn’t possibly be him. While the guy, the caller, was talking, Gibbs double checked his caller ID and confirmed that it was in fact from DiNozzo’s land line. So who the fuck was it who was calling him, who sounded exactly like DiNozzo, except he was much crasser than Tony had ever been in front of Gibbs? Who’d called himself Gibbs’ ‘fuck toy’? Who’d known such intimate and classified details about Tony himself, like the fact that he was still recovering from the plague, and had known things like Ari Haswari was after them? How the fuck had some random guy off the street been able to impersonate Tony, call him from Tony’s land line, and known all these things about him?

Gibbs wanted to believe that this was one of Ari’s ruses. A plant. He was trying to lure Gibbs out into the open and kill him. But why would he choose a fake Tony DiNozzo? He’d obviously been trying to kill Kate, earlier. Why change his focus now? And when would he have had the time to find a Tony DiNozzo impersonator, one that would have been able to pull off Tony well enough over the phone to fool someone as observant as Gibbs was? And besides, Ari didn’t want to just kill Gibbs. Nothing quite so clean or quick. He wanted to hurt Gibbs first, by taking out those closest to him.

His first attempt had been to try to kill Kate. McGee and Kate had found the casings and confirmed the trajectory. It had _not_ been an accident. It wasn’t as if Ari was aiming for Gibbs and there had been wind that changed the path of the bullet. Their theory was that Ari was deliberately trying to pick off the people Gibbs cared about one by one, and he could feel in his bones that this theory was true. So no, it couldn’t be Ari just trying to lure him out into the open and taking him out without warning. Ari would want to hurt Gibbs a lot more before finishing him off. And it was this weakness of Ari’s that would allow Gibbs to hunt him down and kill him first. And that was something Gibbs had vowed to himself on that rooftop after what had gone down.

As to the phone call, he didn’t know what to think. The voice had definitely been Tony’s. One hundred percent Anthony D DiNozzo Jr., even though he was freer with the obscenities. Even though it couldn’t possibly be him. But there was that coughing jag that he’d had. Fuck. That had sounded _exactly_ like Tony. He’d almost lost Tony to a senseless bio-terror attack not that long ago, and his recovery from that whole disaster had been filled with that awful, wet, hacking cough. Every time Tony coughed, Gibbs worried that he would suffocate and die, it had been so bad. And now it was sounding bad again.

But it _couldn’t_ be Tony…. Could it? Gibbs had to wonder about his own mental faculties for a moment. Maybe he’d just wanted for it to be Tony bad enough that he’d hallucinated the entire phone call? But he couldn’t just ignore it. Even if it had only been wishful thinking, or his imagination, or maybe he was hallucinating, he didn’t care, he needed to go to Tony’s apartment to see what the fuck was going on for himself. He pulled on a jacket, poured himself a cup of coffee to go, grabbed his keys and got in the NCIS Charger he’d checked out of the motor pool earlier.

He got to Tony’s apartment complex in record time even though he could barely remember the drive over. He fidgeted his way up the elevator and was knocking on Tony’s front door without really understanding how he had moved his feet and got himself there. Why the hell was he knocking on Tony DiNozzo’s door when he knew full well that Tony wasn’t home? That he couldn’t possibly be home?

There was no answer. Of course. Because there was no way DiNozzo was in there. None.

And yet… That phone call had sounded so _real_.

Gibbs looked around, wondering if this was when Ari would jump out and kill him. But nothing happened, and no one was in the hallway. He snarled under his breath, his eyes burning with tears as he fished in his pockets for another set of keys. _Tony’s_ keys. On _Tony’s_ key ring. That he’d taken possession of earlier. He couldn’t just come all this way here and leave without looking in the apartment. Make sure that he really was only hallucinating.

Fingers trembling, and heart thundering in his chest, he unlocked Tony’s door and stepped inside. Surprisingly, the lights were on in the apartment. A woman was crooning something jazzy in the background. An open bottle of wine stood on the island in the kitchen.

Someone was _there_.

What the fuck?

Gibbs pulled his service weapon out of its holster, flipped off the safety, and tiptoed into the bedroom. It was empty. But the lights were on, as were the lights in the bathroom. He could see light spilling out from the door that was slightly ajar. Using every sniper skill he had, silently, he crept through Tony’s bedroom to the bathroom, and carefully, so very carefully, he pushed the door open a little further so he could see what was going on.

A man lay in the bathtub, eyes closed, seeming to be asleep. A large glass of red wine was loosely held in his hand, stem balanced halfway in the water on his chest. Gibbs didn’t understand why the wine hadn’t already spilled into the bathtub given that the man seemed to be pretty soundly asleep. But that wasn’t the thing that made Gibbs draw in a sharp breath. It was the fact that the man lying in Tony DiNozzo’s bathtub looked like he could be Tony DiNozzo’s identical twin. He had the same short brown hair, standing up in exactly the same way that Tony’s did, the same haircut that had probably cost more than the sum of the price of the clothes Gibbs wore to work for a week, same exact face, same snort snuffle as he slept, which had been Tony’s new feature, a memento of his fight against the pneumonic plague. In fact, he had the same dark circles around his eyes and even though he was asleep, he had an air of exhaustion around him, as if he, too, had gone through the same trying thing that Tony had. He looked to be the same height and build, same long powerfully muscled legs. Same _everything_.

And Gibbs was looking very carefully. Gibbs was more than familiar with Tony’s naked body, having shared plenty of locker room showers, and that hazmat shower during the plague. They’d also shared rooms and even beds in motels on some of their cases, and Tony had never been someone who was body conscious. He slept in the buff, whether he was sharing a room with Gibbs or with anyone else. So this man, whoever he was, had Tony’s body. Gibbs was as sure of it as he could possibly be, given the circumstances.

But even though he looked exactly like Tony, he was also so very _different_. To say that this man was inked up was a ridiculous understatement. It wasn’t a bubble bath so Gibbs could clearly see all the intricate tattoos worked into this man’s skin, starting from what looked to be snakes that were prominently placed on his neck, down to all kinds of other designs on his arms, his chest, his belly, his hips, thighs, almost all the way down his legs. They were all in different shades of blue and seemed to be of various Celtic-looking designs, if Gibbs were to guess. It was difficult to tear his eyes away from some of the markings on the man’s skin. Gibbs had never really been a tattoo kind of guy, he’d been one of the few people in his unit that had managed not to get inked up with the rest of them. Not even the ever popular ‘Semper Fi’ or ‘USMC’ that had been ubiquitous to most Marines. But Gibbs had to admit that his fingers tingled to just touch this man’s skin, follow the lines and the designs, with his fingertips and maybe even with his tongue.

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Cover_1k.jpg)

Shit. What the hell was he doing thinking these kinds of thoughts about a Tony DiNozzo doppelganger lying asleep in Tony’s bathtub? But Gibbs couldn’t stop himself from drinking in the sight of this Tony wannabe. He didn’t even care that it wasn’t Tony, because he looked so much like him, enough like him that it soothed Gibbs’ aching heart somehow. So he stood there and just looked at the man for a long time, cataloguing the similarities and differences between this man and the real Tony.

There were also three rings embedded in his left eyebrow, a green gem stud in his nose – a green the exact shade of Tony’s eyes, if this man also had the same eyes as Tony, something that remained to be seen since his eyes were closed right now – a lip ring that somehow only emphasized his luscious, full lips, some kind of long metal post that went through the upper part of one ear diagonally all the way to the top of his ear, terminating by going through flesh again, and more jewelry of different designs adorning both his ear lobes. Gibbs couldn’t take his eyes off the lip ring, situated towards the left side of his lip. Drawing attention to it. It wasn’t even ornate. It was a simple metallic ring, unadorned, attached to the man’s sinfully full bottom lip. Making Gibbs wonder what it would feel like against his own lips, if he were to kiss the man. And even though the man’s torso was covered with those intricate blue tattoos, Gibbs could clearly see the rings piercing both his nipples. That made him swallow with difficulty. He forced himself to stop looking any lower. He’d never thought that nipple piercings or tattoos were attractive. Had never been his cup of tea. But he could see himself making an exception for whoever this man was.

Gibbs shook himself, bringing himself back to the here and now. He needed to know who this intruder was, why he looked so much like Tony, and why he was making himself at home in Tony’s apartment.

He wiped his suddenly sweaty hands off on his pants before he pointed his service weapon at this tattooed Tony lookalike, and loudly he cleared his throat.

The man startled, his eyes opening wide, and Gibbs saw that his eyes were the exact same shape and color as Tony’s eyes. The color did, in fact, match the stud in his nose. The green of his eyes was unmistakably Tony’s. The wineglass started to slip from his fingers, before he caught it and steadied the glass.

“Don’t move,” Gibbs snarled at him. “Who are you, and what the fuck are you doing in this apartment?”

The man frowned at him, gaping a little. “_Gibbs_?!” he spluttered.

“So you know who I am. Great. But why don’t you tell me who the fuck _you_ are?” Gibbs asked as menacingly as he could.

“Gibbs?” The man sat up, still frowning. “It _is_ you!” he looked confused now. “But somehow, it’s _not_ you.”

“Stop with the gobbledygook. Tell me who you are and what the hell you’re doing here.”

The man sighed and rubbed his forehead tiredly. “I’m Tony. DiNozzo.”

Gibbs frowned at him. “No you’re not.”

“Yes. I am,” he blew out a long breath. “And you are Gibbs.” He sounded confused and resigned.

“No shit,” Gibbs couldn’t help himself.

The man’s lips curled upwards into a smile, and dimples creased his cheeks, just like Tony’s cheeks would have dimpled up when he smiled. “_Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore_,” he murmured, and even Gibbs knew where that quote came from.

Why the hell was this Tony lookalike quoting movies, the way Tony did? Was it Gibbs’ lot in life to be punished by his mistakes? Was this yet another hallucination? He had to stifle the urge to pinch himself. Besides, he still had his weapon trained on the man.

“Look, I’m Anthony D DiNozzo, Jr,” the man spoke softly, but confidently. “But I really don’t think I’m _your_ Tony DiNozzo. _You_ are Leroy Jethro Gibbs. But you aren’t my Leroy Jethro Gibbs.”

“I don’t know who you think you are, but there is no way that you are Anthony DiNozzo,” Gibbs growled. “You’re not him. You can’t be.”

The man kept rubbing his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose, and closing his eyes and pressing on them as if his head was hurting. He started coughing again, and Gibbs couldn’t help but flinch. Because it sounded _exactly_ like Tony’s cough. Surely an impersonator, no matter how much surgery they might have had to make them look like Tony, couldn’t possibly imitate the complicated chest cough that Tony had, that had been caused by the pneumonic plague? He lowered the gun and flicked the safety back on, but he didn’t holster it, wanting to see how this played out next. Who the hell was this guy, and why the hell did he look so much like a tattooed up Tony?

Finally, when the coughing stopped, the man sipped the wine, wheezing and just trying to catch his breath for a minute, just like Tony had been doing. Maybe he needed his inhaler? Gibbs almost sprinted off to get it from Tony’s night stand. Except that this _wasn’t_ Tony. Was it? Gibbs was seriously wondering about his own sanity now.

“Gibbs, do you mind if I get out of the bath and get dressed?” the man asked. “Because this water’s getting cold and I really don’t want to get sick again.”

Gibbs grabbed a robe hanging on a hook and tossed it towards him. The man nodded and stood, and Gibbs could clearly see all of his tattoos now. They were incredible. Intricate, ornate, beautifully crafted pieces of art. They intertwined with each other, Gibbs thought he saw a tree, different knots. The snakes around the man’s neck seemed to move when he moved, which was ludicrous. Gibbs was more thrown by this Tony lookalike than he’d expected. The man shrugged the robe on and carefully stepped out of the tub.

Gibbs kept his gun on the man, escorting him to the living room. The man confidently headed to the kitchen, grabbed towels out of the dryer in the laundry nook hidden in the kitchen area, and sighed, wrapping the warm towels around him. He refilled his wine glass, opened the fridge door, and grabbed a bottle of beer which he handed to Gibbs, seeming to be happy to ignore the fact that Gibbs still had a gun on him. They went to the living room and the man rolled his eyes at the piano and looked around it in a huff.

“I’m guessing Abby and Probie did not rearrange my apartment while we were at work today?” he gave Gibbs a sidelong glance.

“They don’t even know where you live,” Gibbs snapped at him. “Where _Tony_ lived, I mean,” he had to correct himself.

“Yeah, about that. I’m Tony DiNozzo,” the man gingerly sat on the couch, as if it was his first time in it, before he made a grudgingly approving noise. “Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, Senior Field Agent of the MCRT.”

“_Impossible_,” Gibbs told him.

“I’m the best investigator on the MCRT, and I’ve been Gibbs’ partner for…” the man appeared to count on his fingers, “Four, going on five years. I met Gibbs in Baltimore on a case, and when I discovered that my then partner was a dirty cop, Gibbs offered me a place on his team.”

Gibbs frowned. “Did Ari Haswari send you? They made a dossier on Tony and you’re trying to make me think I’m crazy?”

The man sighed and stretched his neck from side to side, loosening himself up. “My specialties are undercover operations, ferreting out the truth, and protection of others, especially those close to me,” he touched the snake head that was right by his jugular, and amazingly, the tattoo lit up from the inside, turning bright blue, before the light turned golden. Tony’s green eyes were glowing brightly, a preternatural light coming from within, and Gibbs could feel a warmth in the apartment that felt like it was seeping right into his soul.

“What the fuck?” Gibbs scrambled backwards in shock. “What the fuck are you?”

The tattoo and the man’s eyes, so like Tony’s, turned back to normal and he slumped into the couch. “Fuck. I’m too tired to do anything but parlor tricks right now,” he told Gibbs, and he seemed to be even paler than before. Gibbs thought he could hear the man’s stomach rumble.

“How did you do that?” Gibbs demanded to know. He looked around the apartment to see if he could see cameras or projectors or something that could somehow make this man glow like that, even though his gut was telling him that he should believe his own eyes.

“Magic,” the man rasped, before he started coughing again. “I’m guessing you don’t have that here?” he managed to wheeze out.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as magic,” Gibbs snapped at him. What the hell was going on here?

“Interesting. Here’s a theory I’m sure you’re going to want to smack me for, but seriously, it’s the only thing that makes sense. I think that I have somehow traveled from my universe to yours. And this one, parallel to mine, is not one where magic and magic users are known and fairly normal,” the man gave him a serious look. “You are Leroy Jethro Gibbs, but you aren’t an empath, and you aren’t a Precog. Am I right?”

“Speak English,” Gibbs didn’t really understand what he was saying. From a parallel universe? This wasn’t science fiction. This was real life.

“You just don’t want to believe me, but in your heart of hearts, in your _gut_, you know I’m telling you the truth,” the man’s green eyes were steady, meeting his gaze. “You might not be an empath here, but I bet there are times when something inside you knows that something is true. It would be an unexplainable feeling. Am I right?”

Gibbs just glared at him.

“My Gibbs called it his ‘gut’, even though he was a registered Precog.”

Gibbs stared at him for a long time, struggling with it. He trusted his gut, but he had no idea what this whole Precog thing was.

“If I weren’t Tony DiNozzo, why would I have had keys to this apartment? This is my home. My sanctuary. Although your Tony sure has frou frou taste in furnishings,” he wrinkled his nose, glaring at the living room.

“_I_ have his keys,” Gibbs shook the key ring.

“Look in the bowl by the front door. You’ll see my set in there.”

Gibbs stood and went to take a look. There was another key ring in the bowl that looked almost exactly like the one Gibbs had taken off of Tony’s body earlier that day. Not exactly the same, there seemed to be some different baubles and knick knacks attached. But close enough.

“How?” he asked the man. “How can this be?”

The man cocked his head and nodded. “Today, were you on a rooftop? With Kate and me? Or I guess, with Tony? And Probie was with the car at street level? We were taking fire as we were trying to stop the missile attack?”

“How would you know that?” Gibbs snarled.

The man rolled his eyes, and the action was _so_ Tony like that it hurt Gibbs to see it. “I was on that rooftop, too. Just… not quite the same one as you were on, since I’m pretty sure I was in a different, parallel and alternate universe.” He stopped to sip his wine. “Kate jumped in front of you when shots were fired from the door to the rooftop. Kevlar stopped the bullet and saved her life. We helped her up and then…”

Gibbs wanted to stop the words, but he couldn’t. All he could do was listen.

“Then, I felt something telling me I had to do this. The goddess called to me and on her urging, I stepped in front of Kate,” the man mused, almost to himself. “I had to shove her a little. I’m sure she hasn’t forgiven me for my ungentlemanly behavior, fucking pussy that she can be.”

Gibbs could see it in his mind’s eye. Kate had been joking about the fact that she would have to be dead before she ever heard Gibbs praising her. All of a sudden, Tony pushed her aside and then the bullet drove right through his throat. It would’ve been a forehead shot on Kate, but Tony was a half a foot taller than her. He’d fallen onto his back on the rooftop, blood pooling around his head like a halo. Wide green eyes blinking reflexively. He’d gurgled once or twice, a sound that would haunt Gibbs forever more, before he stopped breathing altogether. And his unseeing eyes were wide open, lovely green irises staring up, unblinking, at the blue sky. And Gibbs had been left, impotently pointing his sidearm at a building hundreds of yards away. Five hundred and seventy-two meters away, Kate and McGee had reported later. Five hundred and seventy-two meters away from the man who had killed his Tony.

“Then something hit me,” the man’s hands went to his throat, fingering the tattoo of the snake head again. “Right here.”

“How could you know that?” Gibbs could barely make his voice work. “How could you know that? Unless you were the shooter?”

“I’m _Tony_,” the man rolled his eyes again. “I wasn’t the shooter. I was the one who got shot. It was Ari, wasn’t it? He tried to take Kate out. I took the hit, but it hit the _wuivre_, which is probably the only reason why I’m alive.”

“You’re _not_ alive,” Gibbs told him, knowing that he sounded wrecked now. “You _died_ on that rooftop this afternoon.”

Solemn green eyes were on him now. “_Your_ Tony died,” he said softly. “But the goddess protected me. I bear her symbol. He pulled aside his robe, pointing to the stylized bird on his shoulder. A crow or a raven, Gibbs thought. “And the _wuivre_ is a symbol of protection, and a symbol of power for me. He hit me right here,” he fingered his throat again. “But trying to absorb the hit must have somehow transported me here.”

“It’s hard to believe.”

“You’re telling me,” the man nodded his agreement. “I walked in here and I thought maybe Abby had messed with my apartment just to fuck with me.”

“Yours doesn’t look like this?”

“No,” Tony shook his head. “This is slick. So polished. Feels… superficial.”

Gibbs bristled at that, wanting to stand up for Tony’s décor, even though he actually thought the same thing as this man did.

“He was still hiding himself,” the man mused, looking around. “Still too scared to show the world who he really was.”

Gibbs wanted to recoil. This was starting to sound much too real. This man was dissecting Tony, and yet he claimed to be Tony.

“Except he had that,” he pointed to the piano. “That’s the one real thing about this apartment. Did he always have my mother’s piano in here?”

“I helped you move it in here four years ago. I helped _Tony_ move it in, I mean. Not you.”

“So he wanted my mom’s piano right in his face, huh?”

“And you didn’t?”

The man shrugged. “Complicated. _My_ mom’s piano is in storage. You know why.”

Gibbs quirked an eyebrow.

“Well, OK, _you_ don’t know why. But _my_ Gibbs does. Well. He’s _not_ my Gibbs anymore.”

Gibbs frowned at him, suddenly recalling the whole ‘fuck toy’ portion of their phone call.

The man stared at him for a moment, brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Huh,” he finally said. “So you never fucked him?”

Gibbs’ eyes widened at how the man had phrased it. “If you mean Tony, then no. Never.”

“Interesting…” he raised an eyebrow. “Did you want to?” he sounded sincerely curious, and that was definitely a DiNozzo trait.

Gibbs shrugged.

“Huh,” he nodded, apparently interpreting Gibbs’ shrug as an affirmative even though Gibbs had tried to not give too much away. “Did you have a relationship with your Tony outside of work?”

“We were friends,” Gibbs admitted gruffly. “He came over for steak dinners with me sometimes.”

“Nothing more?”

Gibbs shook his head. He didn’t want to admit that he was so broken that he didn’t want to drag anyone else down with him. He’d already had three divorces under his belt, he didn’t need to be the one to smother Tony’s light.

“Interesting…” the man pursed his lips. “My Gibbs didn’t give a shit who he fucked over after he lost Shannon and Kelly.”

Gibbs gasped, because he’d never spoken of Shannon and Kelly, not to Tony, not even to Ducky. Morrow knew, of course, but not many who were still at NCIS did.

The man’s green eyes were on him again and he wished that he could hide from the knowing gaze. “Nobody here knows about them, do they?” he asked softly.

Gibbs sighed. He shook his head.

“Why not?” the tone was so gentle that Gibbs felt tears prick in the back of his eyes.

“’S private,” he finally managed to get out.

The man sighed. “You are a good man,” he told him. “But keeping something like this inside you for all these years has got to be one of the unhealthiest things I’ve ever heard of.”

Gibbs gave him a pained grin.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” the man shook his head.

“Your Gibbs. He fucked you over?” Gibbs had to ask.

The man shrugged. “What are you gonna do. I always did love the bad boys and bad girls who would never love me,” he affected a facetious tone, but Gibbs thought he could hear the hurt in the man’s voice. And his own Tony would never make light of love, not in this way, not unless he was trying to hide how he felt. Which meant that this man had actually loved his Gibbs and had been hurt because of it. A lot, if Gibbs was reading this man right.

“I’m sorry,” Gibbs found himself stammering, apologizing for someone who was kind of him, but wasn’t really him.

The man laughed, surprising him with how much that sounded like Tony. “Don’t you have rules about apologies, or is that just my Gibbs?”

“Sometimes you have to break the rules,” Gibbs told him.

“That’s new,” he smiled. “Wish you’d fucking tell my Gibbs that.”

“You’re giving me a headache,” Gibbs complained. Even though he couldn’t help but believe that this was Tony but not _his_ Tony, this was a Tony from a different universe, it was still a lot to take in. All this talk of his Tony and the man’s Gibbs was too much, and even though he did kind of think of this man as Tony, he couldn’t bring himself to really accept that this was another Tony. Another Tony that he couldn’t have.

“You’re telling me,” the man agreed, as he started to cough. “I really shouldn’t have been out in the rain for as long as I was. But I guess I can’t blame you for that.”

“We got him off the rooftop,” Gibbs sighed, remembering Ducky’s face and McGee’s, and especially Kate’s. The guilt reflected on her face, in all of theirs. The guilt inside himself. “The other you, I mean. He’s with Ducky now.”

“Good,” Tony gave him a small smile. “If your Ducky is anything like mine is, he’ll treat Tony right and help find something to nail Ari with.”

Gibbs nodded grimly. “What happened to _you_? On the rooftop?” he asked.

“After I took the bullet meant for Kate?” he cocked his head and pursed his lips in a move that was so Tony that Gibbs couldn’t help but believe that this was Tony, just maybe with some differences.

Gibbs grunted and nodded.

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “It all went dark. I woke up I guess an hour, two hours ago? I don’t know. A bit ago. On the rooftop. Soaked to the bone. It was raining down on me, I’m lucky I didn’t drown right there on that roof the way I was lying on my back like that, rain coming down my nose and my mouth. My cell wouldn’t work – because it’s looking for a cell tower that doesn’t exist in this universe, I guess. I should have asked Probie to enhance my phone for multi-dimensional parallel universe travel. That would’ve broken his brain but good,” he snickered, but that sparked another coughing jag.

“I’m going to call Ducky,” Gibbs told him.

“Fuck, no,” the man whined and pouted. “He always makes me feel like it’s my fault I’m hurt or sick.”

“Isn’t it always?” Gibbs couldn’t resist.

“Don’t you start with me, motherfucker,” he sighed, before leaning back against the couch and closing his eyes. That was another thing Gibbs wasn’t used to. His Tony had tried not to swear in front of Gibbs, for some reason. But this Tony seemed to have no qualms about it.

Gibbs was about to pull his cell phone out when the man who claimed to be Tony from another dimension sat up abruptly. “To clarify, I’m dead here, right?” he asked again.

Gibbs nodded and glared at him. Thanks for rubbing that in, douchebag.

“Ari thinks I’m dead. Well, I know your Tony is dead, but _I’m_ not. Presumably Ari knows that your Tony is dead as well. So he won’t expect me. I can help you get him. He doesn’t know I exist. We should use that.”

“What are you saying?”

“I assume you’re still looking for him?”

“Fucking hell, of course I am.”

“Good. I have a real score to settle with him.”

Gibbs sighed. “Let me call Ducky and let him examine you first. You sound like you’re getting worse, not better. You had the plague, too, right?”

“But _Boss_,” the man, this other Tony whined and pouted just like Gibbs’ Tony did. He saw Gibbs’ determination and finally nodded. “Fine. But let’s do it at work. This way I can help work the case.”

“And what am I supposed to tell people when you show up looking exactly like my dead Senior Field Agent, huh? I can explain to Ducky who you are, and hopefully not be committed right away, but what the hell am I supposed to say to the world?”

“Do I look _exactly_ like him?”

Gibbs sighed. “My Tony didn’t have any tatts,” he muttered. He didn’t like needles. He wouldn’t have subjected himself to that.

“You don’t have any of my Gibbs’ tatts, either,” the man’s eyes were bright. “Great. Then I can be his cousin,” the man with Tony’s face grinned mischievously.

“Not _Peter_.” Gibbs didn’t think Tony got along with his DiNozzo cousins.

“The one with the button collection?” Tony shuddered dramatically. “God forbid, no. I can be a Paddington cousin. Better that than a DiNozzo, any day of the week.”

Gibbs raised an eyebrow but gave in. “Let’s go then.”

“Let me throw some clothes on.”


	3. Chapter 3

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Ch3.jpg)

**Chapter Three**

Gibbs had to admit that he was nervous when they went through security but the other Tony pulled out some kind of ID that passed muster. Gibbs was afraid to ask, and maybe Security was a little shell shocked as well, seeing this inked up version of Tony DiNozzo walking through their doors, even though they all knew full well that Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo was lying on a slab in Ducky’s morgue. But the result was that this man made it through security and confidently walked with Gibbs to the elevator without any issues. It had taken a while for him to go through the metal detector, what with all the jewelry – rings for the most part – that he had to empty into the bucket, and he pointed out all of his metal piercings, winking naughtily at Gibbs when they wanded his groin and it beeped.

Fuck. Did the man have a piercing on his dick? Was that why the wand was set off by his dick? Gibbs gaped at him, struck by the differences between this Tony and the one that he had lost earlier that day.

The more he was around this man, the more he realized that even though he and Tony were essentially the same person, there really were some stark differences. How they dressed was one of them. Before leaving the apartment, this Tony had gone through Tony’s closet, scoffing at all of the expensive designer suits, taking a while before he found something more to his liking. He had on a pair of tight jeans, once black, washed to a nondescript dark color, a black t-shirt and a black leather jacket. All of his metal piercings and jewelry stood out in stark contrast to the black, and his blue snake tattoo, the _wuivre_ as he had called it, that was on his neck popped out and was incredibly eye catching. Not that Tony DiNozzo wasn’t eye catching on a normal basis, just that the tattoos and piercings really did make him stand out even more.

Before they did anything else though, Gibbs wanted to take him down to Autopsy where Ducky was presumably working on his Tony. But Kate called him to come down to Forensics, because Abby was apparently falling apart. So he pressed the button for Forensics instead.

“Headed to Forensics first,” Gibbs told him. “What name should I call you?”

“Damien,” the man told him. “Damien Paddington. That’s what’s on the ID I gave to Security.”

“I don’t suppose I should ask you how it is you have extra ID on you right now, even though you’re in a different universe than yours?”

“Undercover work,” the man, Tony, or Damien as he was to be publicly known, shrugged. “I always carry extra ID in case of emergencies.”

Gibbs snorted at that. “Did you do that a lot? Undercover work, I mean?”

He nodded.

“My Tony did that, too.”

Tony smiled at that.

“Damien is your middle name, isn’t it?”

Tony – Damien – smiled at him. “Yes it is,” he nodded, pleased. “And it’s going to amuse the hell out of me that people are going to know me by that name. I always wanted to be the Antichrist.”

Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

“_The Omen_? 1976. Shit, maybe you guys didn’t have that movie?” Tony frowned.

“I know that movie,” Gibbs rolled his eyes. “The Antichrist, huh?”

“Hey, I didn’t choose the name,” Tony snarked.

Gibbs nodded. Then they were walking off the elevator and into Abby’s lab. There was no music, and Kate was kneeling by Abby, who was seated at her chair, crying softly. Her hair was down, and Gibbs could see that she had no makeup on. Kate was trying to comfort her, but she was too distraught to hear her words.

“Abs,” Gibbs put a hand on her shoulder.

Abby stood and threw her arms around him. “I’m going to miss him so much, Gibbs,” she wailed. “How could this have happened?”

Gibbs patted her gently. “I know, Abs. I’m going to miss him too.” And he was. Immensely. He had to work hard to keep his own composure. “Hush, Abs. We still got work to do.”

“How can we work without him?” Abby sobbed.

“How can we let what happened to him go unpunished,” Gibbs murmured back, rubbing her back soothingly.

Abby nodded, although she sobbed for a few more minutes, getting Gibbs’ jacket wet, before she pulled herself together and dried her eyes. “You’re right,” she nodded, shuddering as she tried to stop crying. “We’re going to get him.”

“Yeah, we are,” Gibbs told her.

Then he realized that Kate was staring at Tony. Damien. Brown eyes wide in disbelief.

“_Tony_?” she whispered.

The man shook his head, giving her a sad smile. “I’m his cousin. Damien,” he offered her a hand, and Kate shook it, even though she kept staring at him.

“Damien DiNozzo?” Abby turned to him.

“Fuck, no,” Damien shuddered. “Paddington. Cousin on his mother’s side.”

“Shouldn’t you be English then?” Abby asked.

“I find it easier to not sound like a stuffy Englishman when I’m on this side of the pond,” Damien’s accent changed to that of an upper crust English person.

“Neat trick,” Abby gave him a watery smile. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

Damien’s face fell. “Thank you. I am sorry for yours, as well.”

“How did you get in here?” Kate was starting to look at him with suspicion.

“I brought him in with me,” Gibbs jumped in. He didn’t need Kate to start getting suspicious. He needed for his team to keep their focus, and he needed to understand what the alternate Tony would bring to the situation.

“How did you even know about what happened to Tony?” Abby asked, her face about to crumple into tears again.

“I didn’t,” Damien reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. “I was staying with Tony this week. Gibbs came over to Tony’s apartment to check on something, and scared the bejesus out of me, to be honest. He told me what happened to Tony.” Gibbs was impressed by his tone, this man was an accomplished liar, adding some truth to the lie. Making it sound believable.

“Oh…” Abby nodded. “Did he pull a gun on you?”

“Yeah,” Damien’s lips twitched upwards. “He did.”

“You look an awful lot like Tony,” Kate was still staring at him.

“I know,” Damien agreed. “We never met when we were children, so you can imagine how we felt when we met as adults, looking as alike as we do.”

Both women stared at Damien for a while, just taking him in.

“He never talked about you,” Kate’s tone was accusing.

“He has… he _had_ a terrible habit of never talking about things that mattered, though,” Abby gazed at him thoughtfully. “You must have been important to him.”

Damien shrugged.

“They do say that everyone has a twin out there somewhere,” Abby said slowly. “I guess you were Tony’s.”

Damien pursed his lips and nodded.

“What do you got for me, Abs?” Gibbs wanted to steer the conversation back to work.

“I just brought the casings that we found on the other rooftop for Abby to work on,” Kate raised the evidence bag in her hand. “308 model.”

Damien frowned. “He didn’t police his brass?”

“Do you know about firearms?” Kate asked.

“Professional hazard,” Damien muttered.

“I’ll get on this,” Abby took the bag. “And when I'm done, I will tell you the propellant, the primer, the percentage of nickel and copper in the brass, whether or not all three rounds were fired from the same weapon which you assume, but I can prove or disprove. I will tell you who manufactured the ammo, the batch number and, perhaps, where it was sold. I will also, with some degree of accuracy, tell you if it was fired from a lever-action, a bolt-action, a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon.”

“The rounds are Lapua,” Damien held the evidence bag, interrupting Abby’s rant, and he was peering into it.

“What?” Abby asked him.

“Lapua made the ammo. Logo’s on the rim.”

Kate nodded.

“I’m going to get coffee. Girls, Ton… Damien, you guys need anything?” Gibbs asked, almost calling him Tony. But he supposed that it would be fine since probably everyone would make that mistake given the fact that the man was the spitting image of their Tony.

Everyone shook their heads. Gibbs gave Damien a warning glance and the man gave him a small nod in reply, before Gibbs took off. He needed coffee. He needed to clear his head and figure out what the hell was going on, and he needed to wrap his head around the fact that a tattooed up Tony DiNozzo from an alternate universe was running around the Navy Yard. It physically hurt to keep looking at him and trying to fit him in as his Tony DiNozzo. But he needed to do this, and they needed to find and kill Ari for what he had done. And if this other Tony could help him do that, he was definitely going to take it.

Gibbs was walking back in the rain, right by Abby’s window when the glass shattered, and a moment later in the distance a gunshot echoed. Long shot. _Abby_! Ari was shooting at Abby now!

Gibbs’ brain automatically started calculating the distance and trajectory based on the window and the time in between the bullet hitting and the gunshot sounding. He dropped his coffee and ran into the building.

~~~~~~~~~~~

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Tony_1k.jpg)

Tony watched as Kate talked Abby into putting her hair into pigtails and putting on lipstick, noting that Tony wouldn’t want for her not be herself. And besides she needed to get herself together to do the work. To catch the man who had killed Tony.

“You really look so much like Tony,” Kate turned to him. “It’s hard to believe you’re not him.”

He shrugged. “It’s all in the genes, I guess.”

“Oh! I didn’t notice that you had a tatt!” Abby’s eyes brightened when she saw the serpents on Tony’s neck. She pointed out the spider web on her own neck.

“Nice,” Tony admired it. His Abby had a whole different set of tattoos, and he kind of liked the fact that this Abby didn’t have quite as many.

“Does that mean something?” Kate asked him, gesturing to his neck.

“Nobody gets stuff permanently inked into their skin if it doesn’t mean anything to them, do they?” Tony deflected, fingering his jugular where the head of one of the serpents resided. His jacket sleeve rode up when he did that, and the women could see blue ink on his forearm and the designs on the back of his hands.

“How interesting. Tony refused to get any tatts because he thought it would jeopardize his undercover work,” Abby smiled at the memory.

“There are ways to cover them up,” Damien shrugged.

“Can I see?” Abby’s eyes were huge.

Tony sighed and nodded, shrugging the jacket off. Abby walked around him, oohing and aahing at his sleeves of tattoos. Neither woman said anything about the fact that he had a gun holstered on his belt, although Kate kept giving him sharp looks.

“You’re nothing like Tony,” Kate declared.

“Probably not,” Tony agreed.

“Except you do know your firearms protocols. You have law enforcement in your background, too,” Abby told him, giving him a knowing look.

He pulled his jacket back on and gave her an easy smile. “I can neither confirm nor deny any of the above.” They all knew what he meant. He had a gun on his hip. It wasn’t something he was trying to hide, but he didn’t want them digging in and checking things out because his covers were amazing in his own universe, but here? He didn’t know if any of them would truly hold up. If they did, he’d have to seriously buy Probie a new video game or something, since his alternate identities had also somehow crossed the interdimensional portal along with him.

Which reminded him that he should probably be more concerned about trying to get back to his own universe. But right now, this Gibbs’ pain, and now this Kate’s and this Abby’s, this pain over the loss of their Tony DiNozzo trumped everything else. Not to mention, he needed to regroup and regain his power, and do a fuck ton of research to figure out how to get himself back home. Not that there was anyone waiting there for him. But he didn’t belong here. He belonged in his own universe. Where he was about to pull the trigger and leave the MCRT, possibly even NCIS, and embark on a whole new adventure. But if he’d been brought here by the goddess, he had to believe that she meant for him to do something here. Quite probably, help this team that was hurting from the loss of a beloved teammate hunt down the guy that had killed him. And even though Tony himself was alive, and this Ari hadn’t actually been the one to whammy him, he was still furious at any version of this man and he was ready to tear him limb from limb himself, if these people weren’t up to the task. For this universe’s poor dead Tony, and for himself.

Abby and Kate rolled their eyes. Kate was in the middle of telling Tony that she would take him up to the bullpen and let Abby get to work when the glass in the lab window, high up towards the ceiling shattered, and a shot came through, whizzing right by Abby’s head. Tony could see bits of glass on the top of her head.

In a flash, Tony had pulled both Kate and Abby down and laid his body protectively on top of Abby’s.

“Are you hit?” he asked them.

“No,” Kate told him, her weapon drawn.

“No,” Abby answered. “Damien. You’re heavy,” she complained.

Tony pulled his own gun out. “Sorry.” He nodded to Kate to move towards the wall, off to the side from the window, to get out of the line of sight. Kate nodded, and they moved, Tony dragging the prone Abby by one arm with him, keeping as low as he could.

“No wonder you’re so heavy,” Abby was groping him. “You’re all muscle!”

Tony ignored her wandering hands, ensuring that he got her to safety.

“Packing a nice booty, too,” Abby squeezed his ass.

“Hey, is this how you deal with getting shot at?” Tony had to ask her, which made Kate giggle.

“I don’t know. It’s my first time,” Abby’s eyes were wide.

Shock, Tony thought.

“Abby!” it was Gibbs, calling from the entrance to Forensics.

“Boss, down!” Kate yelled at him.

“We’re taking fire,” Tony added. Stating the obvious, but whatever.

Gibbs turned all the lights off and, keeping his body low, ran to where they were hunkered down together. “Are you OK?” he asked them.

“Yeah,” Kate answered for them all.

“Close off Anacostia Park between the bridges. Tell Metro cops it's a crime scene,” Gibbs barked at Kate.

“On it,” Kate stood and started moving away.

Gibbs pulled her back, warning her about night vision scopes and she nodded and kept low as she moved out. Abby was putting the pieces together.

“Ari didn’t shoot at you and hit Tony by mistake, did he?” Abby asked him. “He tried for Kate, he got Tony instead. And he’s after me now!”

“I was walking by the window when he fired,” Gibbs tried to soothe her.

“You’re just saying that to make me feel safe.”

They huddled together, Gibbs hugging Abby for a while. Tony wished that he’d been able to catch more than the little catnap in the bath, because he was exhausted and his power reserves severely depleted. He needed to rest to recover from his ordeal, because apparently, getting shot and blasted into a parallel universe was really hard on a person. Still, he’d surreptitiously tried to do his work. They didn’t seem to have any awareness of magic in this universe, so he had to quietly do his thing. Even through the evidence bag, and the evidence containers, he’d managed to tap deep into himself to dredge up some unknown reserve of power, and he could feel the casings’ connections to Ari. There was no mistaking it. Even in this universe, Ari Haswari’s magical signature didn’t feel very different from the Ari of his own. Ari Haswari was definitely the one wreaking all this havoc.

After he and Gibbs escorted Abby up to the bullpen and delivered her to Kate, Gibbs dragged him down to the morgue, still insisting that Ducky examine him. They walked into Autopsy and saw that Ducky was speaking quietly to Tony’s dead counterpart as he worked on him.

“Ducky,” Gibbs greeted him. “You should have brought in another ME.”

“Couldn’t,” Ducky said shortly. “Not for Anthony.”

Gibbs sighed. “I’ve lost men in combat before, Duck.”

“But this is different. I would trust no one else with this sad duty, Jethro,” Ducky replied without looking up. “Don’t you agree with me, Anthony?” Ducky asked. Tony almost jumped before he realized that this Ducky was speaking to the dead version of him on his table.

“Ducky. I have a live patient for you.”

“Jethro,” Ducky complained, turning and frowning at Gibbs for the interruption. When he caught sight of Tony, his eyes widened. “_Anthony_?” he gasped.

Tony shook his head and opened his mouth to give Ducky his alias. “Damien…” he started.

“We have quite the story for you, Ducky,” Gibbs interrupted him. “Can we sit down? In private?”

Tony couldn’t take his eyes off of his own dead body. It was interesting to see himself with no tattoos, no piercings, no adornments of any sort. Nothing with which to protect himself. Somehow, he suddenly felt truly naked, seeing himself in completely bare skin. It was even more disconcerting to see himself with none of the tattoos that had marked an entire lifetime of service than to be confronted with what was arguably, his own dead body. He stared at the man lying on the metal examination table, feeling an almost irresistible urge to touch it. To touch him.

This man that was laid out on the table looked so much younger than Tony felt. He looked innocent. Untouched by the things that Tony had experienced in his own messed up life. There was a sweetness about him that was unmistakable. It was no wonder this Gibbs couldn’t fuck him. He knew that even his own miserable bastard of a boss wouldn’t have the heart to fuck over this sweet, young man. Who was now dead on a table because Ari Haswari was a whack job who had a fucked up problem with Gibbs.

Tony’s heart hardened. He was definitely going to get Ari first, before he would worry about how he was going to get back to his own universe. This sweet version of himself deserved retribution, and who better to deliver it than another version of Tony himself? Tony had no choice but to take this very personally.

“_Tony_,” Gibbs barked at him, and automatically he turned to obey. No matter how much he had been hurt by Gibbs – by his Gibbs – it was still second nature for him to blindly obey the man. Even this version of him.

They went into Ducky’s inner sanctum and Ducky closed the door and sat behind his desk, giving them curious looks. “Anthony?” he tried again.

Tony gave Gibbs a worried look.

“Yes. It’s Tony,” Gibbs confirmed it.

Tony lifted up his hands and widened his eyes. What was the point of the subterfuge if Gibbs was going to just out him like that!

“I can’t very well tell Ducky that you’re Tony’s cousin Damien, who also, coincidentally, had the pneumonic plague at the exact same time that you did, and could he please fix you up too, can I?” Gibbs snarked at him.

Tony couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped him.

But Ducky. Ducky went pale and with trembling fingers, grasped Tony’s hand. “Anthony…” he croaked. He glanced at his door, because he had just been working on a dead Anthony DiNozzo out there, and here was a living, breathing copy of him. Although Tony would like to think that the dead version of him was the copy, and he was the original. The dead Tony contained all the good, and he was the bad guy. He was the one with darkness within him, not that poor sweet man lying on Ducky’s table.

“Yeah,” he finally nodded, squeezing Ducky’s hand back. “Yeah, Ducky. But I’m not your Anthony, I’m afraid.” He fingered his _wuivre_ tattoo with his free hand. “I’m Anthony DiNozzo, but I’m not from here. From this universe, I mean. I think I got blasted into this universe by Ari’s shot.”

“That’s preposterous,” Ducky glared at him.

“And yet…” Tony shrugged. “I’m here. Like your Tony, I was shot in the neck today, on that rooftop. Ari Haswari was aiming for Kate and I got in his way.”

“But why aren’t you dead? Like our Anthony?” Ducky asked. “Let’s set aside the impossible notion that there are in fact, multiple parallel universes. And that even if there were multiple parallel universes, how one would be able to travel from one universe to another. Let’s set all that aside for a second. If you took a round through the neck, a full metal jacket round, you should be in the same condition as the man on my table in the other room!”

Tony could see the tears in Ducky’s eyes. “Ducky,” he sighed. “I don’t know how to explain this…”

“They’ve got magic in his world, Duck,” Gibbs’ voice surprised them both.

Tony rolled his eyes and glared at Gibbs but the blue-eyed man was completely unaffected by it. But that was exactly the same reaction the Gibbs of Tony’s world would have had and that was somehow comforting.

“It’s true,” Tony told Ducky. “My magic protected me. But somehow the protections and whatever special enchantments and shit that Ari coated his fucking bullets with where I came from must have had some violent reaction, and I woke up on the rooftop in this world instead of mine, earlier this evening.”

Ducky looked unconvinced.

“Show him the thing. With the glowy stuff,” Gibbs told him.

Rolling his eyes at the ‘glowy stuff’, Tony touched the serpent head on his neck, and felt the power flow through him. He felt the ink glow in his neck, and he knew that his eyes were glowing too, and he felt connected to all the living things nearby, even though he wasn’t in direct contact with the earth. He kept it up for only a second before he dropped it, and he slumped forward in exhaustion. He desperately needed to sleep. To recharge.

“That is a _wuivre_,” Ducky correctly identified the serpents on Tony’s neck.

“It is,” Tony smiled at him. He shouldn’t be surprised that this Ducky seemed to have all kinds of knowledge because his Ducky was exactly the same way.

“It is a symbol of protection for warriors, is it not?” Ducky asked.

“Close enough,” Tony nodded.

“My god,” Ducky breathed, staring at him in awe.

“The goddess may have spared me the same fate as your Tony,” Tony told him. “But by bringing me here, I would guess that she’s telling me I have work to do here.”

“We still need to find Ari,” Gibbs snarled. “He just fired into Abby’s lab.”

“Good lord,” Ducky exclaimed.

“It had to come from across the river in Anacostia Park.”

“Was Abigail hurt?”

“No,” Gibbs shook his head. “She’s a little shook up. Kate’s with her.”

“In the lab?” Ducky was concerned.

“In the squad room. Writing up an incident report.”

“So it was Ari?” Ducky asked.

“Of course it was,” Gibbs snapped. “He had a thing for Kate. He aimed for Kate and Tony… Tony took the bullet meant for her.”

“It was definitely Ari,” Tony piped up. “I could feel the casings had a connection to him. And his intent was definitely dark. I could feel that, too.”

“When you looked at the casings in the lab? That why you were feeling it through the evidence bag?” Gibbs raised his eyebrows. “You magic some shit up?”

Tony nodded. “I’m about out of juice so I can’t do anything too fancy. But I could definitely pull that much out of the casings.”

“Maybe he meant to hit you, Jethro?” Ducky speculated.

“No. Him sniping Abby means he’s after my people.”

“Women first,” Tony added.

Gibbs nodded his agreement.

“Then he’s torturing you,” Ducky mused. “One has to wonder what made him such a sadist.”

“I don’t give a damn,” Gibbs snarled. “I just want to kill the bastard.”

“I really don’t think there’s any other alternative,” Tony voiced his agreement. The Ari in his world had been good at cloaking himself, but he still gave off an aura of insanity. He had no doubt that the man was just as off his rocker here.

“Meantime, Tony’s hacking up a lung from being in the rain,” Tony started when Gibbs placed a gentle hand at the small of his back when he said the words. His Gibbs had rarely ever touched him with this kind of care and affection. His Gibbs had not been shy about fucking him but had never touched him in kindness. He didn’t know how to react to it now. “I need you to check him over, give him some meds or something. We can’t take the chance of any kind of relapse.”

“I know how much you hate it when Anthony is ill,” Ducky smiled. “I shall take care of him.”

“He’s going by Damien Paddington. Cousin of our Tony’s,” Gibbs inclined his head towards the main Autopsy area again.

“Damien,” Ducky smiled, his rheumy blue eyes sparkling. “Your middle name?”

Tony smiled back and nodded.

“It will take me a while to sort you out,” Ducky nodded. “First we need to take an x-ray of your lungs. So we can figure out what’s what.”

“I’ll leave you to Ducky then,” Gibb stood.

“But…” Tony gave Gibbs a panicked look.

“I want you to stay out of sight as much as you can. A surprise for Ari and whoever’s helping him,” Gibbs told him. “I’ll keep you posted on what we find out. And get some rest. You look like a stiff wind’d knock you over.”

Tony pouted. He couldn’t help it.

“Please,” Gibbs cupped Tony’s face with a gentle hand. “I need you to be safe.” He could see what this Gibbs wasn’t saying. He’d already lost his Tony. He didn’t want to lose another Tony to Ari.

Tony’s heart stuttered in his chest. Gibbs’ eyes were sad and pleading. He blew out a long breath and nodded, clearing his throat and tearing his eyes away from Gibbs’.

“Thank you,” Gibbs gave him a smile. “Get some sleep tonight. We’ll know more in the morning.”

Wordlessly, Tony nodded.

Gibbs ran his fingers through Tony’s hair, gave Ducky a nod goodbye, then he moved towards the door. Ducky was giving them both a strange look, before he broke into a wide smile.

“Well,” he rubbed his hands together. “Let’s see how _you_ fared against the pneumonic plague, shall we?”

Tony didn’t bother suppressing the groan at that.

“And how much metal do you have on your body, young man? We shall need to remove some of these piercings so I can get an accurate x-ray.”

“Gibbs!” Tony called for help.

“You’re on your own, Skippy!” Gibbs gave him a salute before he disappeared.

Tony rubbed his still aching forehead, trying not to miss the warmth of Gibbs’ fingers on his face, and tried to ignore the look of gleeful determination on Ducky’s face. He knew that look. He was in for it now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget that this is part of the NCIS Big Bang Challenge, and I am exercising the option of posting my story in two days. I will post the final three chapters tomorrow, so I'll see y'all tomorrow, ok? :D


	4. Chapter 4

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Ch4.jpg)

**Chapter Four**

By the time the sun rose, Gibbs knew a little bit more than the previous night. Abby had found two bullets embedded in the car that McGee had been using as cover while Gibbs, Kate and Tony had been on the rooftop. When a terrorist took potshots at McGee, he’d ducked behind the car and that had been what saved him from one of Ari’s bullet. But Ari had shot the controller after he missed McGee. Accounting for the two .308 slugs that were embedded in the car.

Kate arrived at the garage, bringing news from Metro PD regarding what they found in Anacostia Park, where the shot into Abby’s lab had come from. She also brought with her a sleepy but much healthier seeming other Tony DiNozzo, aka his ‘cousin’ Damien Paddington.

“He didn’t police his brass again,” Kate announced. “Metro PD found a .308 casing in the park next to tire tracks.”

McGee took a sharp indrawn breath and dropped the evidence container he was holding when he saw the tattooed up version of Tony. His hazel eyes were wide and he looked around, as if wondering if he was the only one seeing this unlikely vision.

Damien bent over, picked up the evidence container and frowned. “This slug come from the car?” he asked Abby.

“Yeah. 308 to match the casings Kate and McGee found. Ari took a shot at McGee first. Before he tried for Kate,” Abby answered.

Damien made a thoughtful sound, fingering the bag and frowning at the content before he absently handed the container back to McGee. Gibbs wondered what he might have gotten from the slug. Not that any of his magic would be admissible in court. Not here, at least. But if it could tell him where Ari was right now, then he would absolutely take it. He couldn’t help but wonder if maybe magic was so established that it would be normal to be used as evidence.

“Are you all seeing what I’m seeing?” McGee was timid and scared again.

“That’s not Tony, Timmy,” Abby sounded so sad. “It’s his cousin.”

“Damien,” the man’s lips curled up slightly as he introduced himself to McGee. “Sorry, I should’ve mentioned that. Before you die of a heart attack.”

“C-cousin?” McGee looked skeptical.

Damien nodded. “I know. We look very alike,” he made a face. “Other than the obvious differences,” he worried the lip ring with his tongue, and tilted his head somewhat, so McGee could see the snakes tattooed on his neck more clearly.

“You sound _just_ like him, too!” McGee was still staring at him in disbelief.

“What can I say? Tony and I didn’t stray too far from our Paddington roots,” Damien shrugged.

“It’s uncanny,” Kate agreed with McGee.

“It’s shocking,” McGee sighed. “I thought, for a minute, that, you know…”

Tears welled up in Abby’s eyes. “Me too, Timmy,” she whispered. “Me too.”

Gibbs watched Damien take Abby’s hand and squeeze it gently, in a gesture that reminded him so much of Tony that he had to close his eyes and take a deep breath.

“We can’t bring him back to life,” Damien murmured comfortingly. “But we sure as hell can take Ari down for what he did.”

“Wait, how do you know about… _Ari_?” McGee gave Damien a sharp look, and Gibbs silently cheered. He wanted to share with Tony that Tony’s Probie was finally starting to think more critically and asking the right questions.

“Gibbs read me in after he about gave me a heart attack at… Tony’s apartment last night,” Damien shrugged, giving Gibbs what he could only call a coy look. Gibbs didn’t miss the almost misstep there, though, where Tony had probably almost called his supposed cousin’s apartment his own. “And I’m not going to let some fucked up terrorist take my cousin’s life, and keep threatening everyone else’s lives, without there being some real consequences.”

The menace in Damien’s tone surprised everyone, Gibbs included. Because while Tony had had his moments of fury and anger, Damien seemed so much more dangerous than Tony had been or could ever be. It was more than just the tattoos. There was something dangerous coiled within the man, something much darker than what his own Tony had been.

“Kate,” Gibbs needed to get his head back into the case. There was an uncontrollable itch right under his skin where he couldn’t get at. That was how he felt about Ari Haswari. But he was determined not to fail at bringing Ari down.

“Yeah, Gibbs?”

“Tell Metro PD to bring us the evidence,” he told her.

“Already did.”

Gibbs nodded and headed towards the elevator. Damien trailed along with him now, taking Tony’s – his Tony’s – customary position a little behind Gibbs and to his right, ready to cover him.

“Oh, and by the way,” Kate called to him. “The director wants to see you up in MTAC.”

Gibbs sighed and met Damien’s eyes. The younger man nodded and fell back, letting Gibbs get on the elevator alone. He was going to lie low and keep his eyes open. Getting Morrow’s attention was not a good way to lie low. Gibbs gave him a stern look and he quirked up an eyebrow and smirked at him in response. Gibbs rolled his eyes, letting the elevator doors close. He hoped that the younger man could work his magic and conjure up a clue. And he literally meant magic, because Gibbs couldn’t stop thinking about the way that this Tony had been able to make his tattoo and his eyes glow. He’d mentioned how he’d traced the connection of the casings back to Ari, and Gibbs would normally be skeptical of anyone who would make such a claim, but the glowy eyes thing had convinced him. So who knew what else the man was capable of doing.

Gibbs put his eye to the retinal scan and walked into MTAC. There was an op ongoing on the screen, which he kept half an eye on, and he went to sit next to Morrow who was seated pretty far back in the viewing area of MTAC.

While the op went on in the background, he updated Morrow on what they had found so far – the casings from the sniper’s nest and from Anacostia Park, the tire tracks, the slugs in the car. The director informed him that he had been receiving calls from every director he knew assuring him that they would be hunting down this sniper as if one of their own had been killed. He had also endorsed Gibbs’ recommendation to award Tony, _his_ Tony, the dead one and not the alternate universe one, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That piece of news hurt Gibbs more than he’d expected because for several years now, Gibbs had been receiving medals for his performance and Tony had been the one representing him and receiving the awards on his behalf. Gibbs hadn’t ever bothered to even attend the ceremony.

It wasn’t fair that Tony had to die before his contributions were fully recognized. Tony had deserved the awards just as much as he did, given that Tony had been his partner. But he supposed, at least Tony was finally being recognized. And it was good that the other agencies were also out hunting Ari. It was cold comfort, but Gibbs thought it was better than if they wanted to look away. But then Morrow started with the bad news.

First, that Ari Haswari was the FBI’s mole, and neither they nor all of the supposedly helpful people from the other agencies believed that Ari was behind this. They all believed that Ari was trying to stop a disaster from happening. They didn’t believe that he was the one gunning down Federal Agents to suit his own agenda. Gibbs was upset at this, enough to barely notice the explosion in the background as the op on screen was completed in a fiery fashion. Not that Morrow didn’t believe Gibbs and didn’t believe that it wasn’t Ari. Morrow knew him and trusted his gut, too. But that there were apparently plenty of others who didn’t believe it, their numbers were numerous and unfortunately for Gibbs, they were backing the people who were running Ari and claimed to know him best. And everyone was covering their asses at this fuck up. Gibbs could barely hold back his anger at that. And then, after advising Gibbs to ensure that he covered his ass when bringing Ari in, Morrow told him that he was leaving NCIS to take a deputy director position at the Department of Homeland Security, effective immediately.

After a moment of panic where Gibbs actually thought that Morrow meant to leave Gibbs as the director of NCIS – which would be an absolute and total disaster – Morrow left him to the new director of NCIS, which turned out to be yet another piece of bad news for Gibbs. It was Jenny Shepard. She was not just an agent that he had had a hand in training, but she was also his ex from six years ago. Luckily not one he’d married. But they had had the kind of relationship that was based almost entirely on undercover adrenaline and sexual tension that was immediately embraced, defused, resolved and satiated, in every sense of the word. She was the reason Gibbs had Rule 12. And here she was now, blowing hot and cold at him.

Was she a woman, was she his boss, was he going to call her Jenny or Director, were they supposed to have a relationship outside of work? All of them were good questions and he couldn’t actually tell what with the mixed signals she was sending him. Gibbs didn’t want to alienate her right away because he needed her support to continue on his rampage to hunt Ari Haswari down, but she was apparently one of the people who was convinced that Ari was innocent and that Gibbs was a loose cannon, grabbing onto any lead and forcing it to work for him. She’d already convinced herself that his gut was inaccurate, despite all the times that it had saved both of their lives in the past.

And despite the whole ‘there won’t be any “off the job”, Agent Gibbs’ crap, she kept flirting with him and seemed to still somehow be thrusting herself at him. As if he had been sitting on his hands just waiting for her to drop back into his life, ready to play whatever games she wanted. Gibbs was done playing her stupid games. All the seductive smiles she was giving him wasn’t enough to gloss over how she was ignoring the fact that Gibbs was on a hunt, and that Gibbs had lost a valuable and senior member of his team, someone who had taken a bullet for another member of his team. A member of NCIS who deserved justice and the truth instead of whatever political crap that was going on in the background. Tony was someone who had been incredibly precious to Gibbs, whether he’d acknowledged it to the man or not. So he really didn’t have any patience for her stupid sexual games. He wasn’t interested. If he was going to be interested in anyone, at this point, the only person that sprang to mind was either dead or had miles of tattooed skin. And possibly a pierced dick. And technically, they were _kind of_ the same person. And neither of them were Jenny Shepard.

Gibbs’ brain strayed for a moment, wondering if it was only the _wuivre_ around the other Tony’s neck that glowed, or if the other tattoos on his body might also glow, depending on what the alternate universe Tony was slinging. He wondered if he’d be able to witness more of it, because that glowing Tony was breathtaking.

Shepard or Jenny or whatever she wanted him to call her, the new director, followed him down to the bullpen, even though it was obvious that Gibbs needed to get back to work. Shit. He’d meant to re-pack his go bag the previous night, but unfortunately the phone call from Tony’s apartment had cut his time at home short. He needed to go back to his house to pick up fresh clothes for the day before the situation heated up again. Kate was sitting at her desk, typing away at the computer, although she stopped to give Gibbs a curious look when Jenny kept following him and nattering in his ear.

“Kate, where are we?” he barked at his agent, ignoring Jenny’s presence, and trying to stop himself from looking at Tony’s desk. Because he would normally be barking this question at his Senior Field Agent. And that was supposed to be one Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo. It was another punch in the gut when he realized that he would never be barking at his Tony DiNozzo, ever again. He wouldn’t ever see his smile, or his pout, or hear the whining, or the incessant movie chatter. Every time he had this realization, that stab of pain that went through him was unbelievable.

“McGee and Abby are working firearms analysis,” Kate answered, her eyes going back and forth between him and Jenny. “I’m matching tire tracks to vehicles.” She started to open her mouth to keep talking, and Gibbs guessed that it was about ‘Damien’, so he caught her eye and gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Luckily, she stopped speaking at that. Gibbs didn’t quite know why but he didn’t want to tell Jenny Shepard that DiNozzo’s cousin was in the building. It felt like something important to withhold from the new NCIS director until he knew more about what it was she was doing, following him around, like she had skin in this whole Ari thing. Something crawled in his gut about the whole thing with Ari and at this point, Jenny was an unknown quantity and his gut kept telling him that he couldn’t trust her, despite their past history.

“_No one_ is to leave this building,” Gibbs told Kate, stressing his words in such a way that he hoped she would understand that he also meant Damien. “Tell McGee he’s on protection detail in Abby’s lab.” Again, he specified the lab, where he knew Damien was, instead of Abby herself.

Kate gave him a solemn nod and no arguments, and he thought she understood what he meant. If it had been Tony, he would have had no doubts that Tony understood exactly what he wasn’t saying, loud and clear, but that Tony would have also been able to communicate back to Gibbs that he’d understood without giving anything away to anyone else, because few people ever understood their non-verbal conversations. But Gibbs didn’t have that unspoken communication down pat with Kate, yet. He tamped down that feeling of sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him at the thought that he’d never exchange another loaded glance with Tony again.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” he told her.

Mentally shaking himself, he gave Kate another significant look before he walked to the elevator, Jenny walking with him. He could feel Kate’s eyes on him and Shepard, who was apparently going with him _to his goddamned house_ to continue this conversation about Ari and to tell Gibbs why he was so fucking wrong about him. Talk about why there wasn’t going to be any ‘off the job’ bullshit. Morrow had never once followed Gibbs to his house to keep talking to him and here they were, day one of Shepard’s role and she was already coming home with him. Even Gibbs thought that that was unprofessional of her, to say the least. It was also evident that she had already decided that Ari was innocent and that irked Gibbs to no end and caused him to stop paying attention to her words.

He was barely focusing on what she was saying the whole way there, and then the whole nagging him about his boat, and talking about _Diane_, as if she had any right to speak to him about his personal life. He didn’t even know what the hell was going on there. Talk about blowing hot and cold. If they weren’t supposed to have an ‘off the job’ thing, then why the hell was she in his house asking him about his exes and his boats while he was changing and packing his go bag? And talk about interviews she was giving to television morning shows. As if NCIS wasn’t under attack by someone who seemed bound and determined to take out those closest to Gibbs, women first. Arguing with him about his conviction that Ari was the one targeting them. That she didn’t believe that Ari was the one who had murdered his Tony.

It made Gibbs so angry that Jenny was putting ass kissing and ‘establishing relationships’ with these people as the new director of NCIS ahead of the lives of her agents. That he couldn’t even count on her to side with him on this, a case where his Senior Field Agent had been shot by a sniper on that rooftop. A man who had saved the lives of many civilians and servicemen and women, not to mention saving his teammates’ lives on more than just that one occasion. Jenny had forgotten what it was to be an agent, to put her life on the line for something that mattered, to sacrifice herself for the good of others, and to believe that they were backed by those who were looking out for them while they put themselves on the line.

He stormed through the house, carrying his go bag and getting back into his car. It was a good thing that Jenny was right behind him, slipping into the passenger seat as he slammed the driver door shut, because he was in no mood to wait for her. He would have happily left her standing in his driveway if she hadn’t gotten her ass back into the car at the same time that he did.

~~~~~~~~~~~

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The fact that Tony actually knew the exact layout of their building was quite advantageous to him. The building was pretty much the same, down to the stupidly orange walls, although some rooms were used a little differently in this universe than in his. But the biggies were the same – the bullpen, MTAC, the Director’s office, the morgue, Abby’s lab, the holding cells. They were constants, but he’d definitely found a few little differences here and there. Well, that was, after he snuck away from Abby and McGee, while McGee was on protection detail for Abby, and prowled around the building, trying to listen in on different conversations. He liked doing that to gauge the general atmosphere of the building and to see if he could pick up threads that might be useful to the case or to anything else, really.

From what he could tell, people were shocked and dismayed that the Tony of this world had died. He had apparently been well liked, and the stories that he overheard people telling each other made him smile. Their Tony had been quite the character, a combination of asshole and sweetheart that apparently made most people remember him fondly and sadly. Tony had no illusions that he would be just as fondly remembered by his own team in a universe far, far away. He was definitely one hundred percent asshole compared to his counterpart and his teammates knew it.

But despite maybe not being at one hundred percent, he was definitely feeling less tired and more prepared to handle whatever might be coming next. He’d managed to get a few hours of sleep. It wasn’t like he’d meant to, but the Ducky in this world was just as savvy to his tricks, and just as devious as the Ducky from his own universe, and he had given him a cough medicine that had put him right to sleep. Tony had woken up, his face smooshed into the old couch in Ducky’s office, drool puddling on the cushion. He’d woken up a little groggy from the meds, but pretty clear headed and much less congested somehow. This Ducky knew the quirks of his biology and how he interacted with the different medications. Apparently, the Tony of this world must have the same sensitivities as he did to meds. He wondered if the dead man got incredibly loopy the way he did when he was on pain meds. Maybe all of the Tony DiNozzos across all of the universes that existed reacted the same way to codeine? Tony had seen recordings of himself when drugged up and even he had to admit that he was stupidly funny when he was high.

He heard some heartwarming stories about the dead Tony, how he’d helped different people with different things and never brought it up again or accepted their thanks. How he put up a front, to try to charm you and manipulate you, but how if one got to know him better, it would be obvious that he was using that persona to mask some straight up sweetness. Their Tony apparently secretly coached basketball for underprivileged youth at a local YMCA. Their Tony always donated to whatever charitable causes that they or their kids were advocating, but only if they promised to keep his contributions quiet. He let his teammates believe that he was callous and uncaring even though he’d been the opposite. How he gossiped with everyone and knew everything, and could blackmail anyone if he ever wanted to, but yet people still talked to him and trusted him with their secrets. Working with underprivileged youth sports teams was something Tony would have absolutely loved to do, but unfortunately for him, his life was too filled with work drama, Gibbs drama, and work-related Gibbs drama and he’d never had the energy to do it. This Tony had apparently not had the same problems.

Tony found himself envying the dead Tony a little, for his relationship with his teammates and other co-workers. That Tony might have been flawed, and insecure, Tony thought, but he was still loved and appreciated by his agency, even if he hid his true self from his team. It was interesting to witness because he was himself much too abrasive and callous with his own NCIS staff. He wasn’t secretly a nice guy. It did make him wonder how their childhoods might have been different to produce this difference in their personalities, or maybe their childhoods had been the same but this Tony had chosen the high road and he himself had not sought that more difficult option? It was something for him to think about, at least.

At least his powers had been somewhat recharged by the sleep he’d gotten. While he wasn’t at full steam, he was still able to put up a glamor so that people around him wouldn’t quite notice him or the details about him, so he was able to freely move around without being accosted for being their dead Tony’s doppelganger. And in this way, he learned even more things.

For instance, he was lurking in the shadows when a woman with dark curly hair strode into the bullpen as if she owned it, and started sparring verbally with Kate. The Kate here was apparently just as prickly and insecure as the Kate in his own universe, except without the low-level psychic powers that enabled her to build chillingly effective profiles. His Kate was even better if she had skin to skin contact with a person, her touch telepathy enabling her to glean significant thoughts from them. She usually kept her gloves on to minimize accidental contact and tended to wear long sleeves and skin covering clothing, while this Kate was baring her skin in a blouse and just like most of the doppelgangers in this universe, Tony couldn’t see any visible tattoos. He didn’t realize how creamy Kate’s skin truly was. Creamy enough that he could see the dark blush rising in her cheeks, which he could tell was a sign that she was getting pretty aggravated by the dark-haired interloper, Ziva David, interestingly of _Mossad_.

Now, why would a Mossad agent be walking around looking for Gibbs in the bullpen? Tony wondered. She had to be Ari’s handler. Tony had never seen her before, and he stood and focused on her, trying to pick up what he could from her. He wished he had his universe’s Kate’s powers, though. He was better with inanimate objects, so he tried to focus on smelling her perfume, and the clothes that she wore, to see what he could pick up from it, even without having any physical contact with her things. It wasn’t a whole lot of detail, but he could feel that everything about the woman was a lie. She was hiding a lot of things, and her aura was not clean, but neither was it completely dark either. She was an unknown quantity who could still go either way, apparently.

He was there to witness Kate badger this woman about telling her why she was looking for Gibbs. “Miss David, you can sit there and attempt to slouch provocatively for an hour if you'd like, or you could just tell me what you need and maybe I can help.”

“You can't help because I'm here to stop Special Agent Gibbs from killing a Mossad officer,” Officer David sniffed haughtily at Kate.

“Ari Haswari?”

“Yes.”

“I'd wish you luck, but I want the bastard dead too,” Kate snarled, and Tony wanted to applaud her for standing up for the poor dead Tony of this world.

He was also there, quietly watching, when Gibbs and a redhead that he didn’t recognize came off the elevator. Now _this_ woman was broadcasting so strongly that even though Tony’s gifts did not lie with telepathy, even he could tell that this woman craved power and vengeance, and she was hot and bothered for Gibbs. He could tell from Gibbs’ body language that Gibbs had known her in the biblical sense and anyone with eyes could tell that he wasn’t happy with her at that moment. The redhead was interesting, though her aura made Tony feel sick to his stomach. Something was wrong with her, some kind of ailment or sickness. It was twisting her inside into something that made Tony wince. He didn’t know who the hell this woman was, but he knew that she was not good news for Gibbs.

Tony watched, eyes narrowing, as the redhead went up to Ziva David and, casual as anything, kissed her cheek.

“Shalom, Jen,” Officer David greeted her with a small smile.

Interesting. The Mossad operative knew the twisted redhead panting after Gibbs. Tony watched intently to see what would happen next.

“Shalom,” the redhead returned.

Gibbs was with Kate, and Tony had to strain and boost his hearing with magic to pick up what they were saying.

“You first,” Gibbs told her.

“Ziva David, Mossad. She's here to stop you from whacking Ari. What about her?”

“Director Jenny Shepard. Same mission.”

“Which agency?” Kate asked.

“Ours.”

Tony gawked at the redhead. A new NCIS director? What the hell was going on in this universe? Where was Morrow? And what the hell was an NCIS director doing, kissing the cheek of the Mossad handler of the supposed Hamas sleeper agent who had killed at least one NCIS agent already? The sketchy Mossad chick had called the new NCIS director by her first name. That was telling, too.

Tony moved back further into the shadows, using a little of his powers to pull the darkness even closer, cloaking him from view, listening intently, and from afar, weaving charms into the Star of David that hung on Officer David’s chest. Metals were his specialty – bullet casings, jewelry, he didn’t need to be in physical contact to work his magic. He put a tracking charm on her, so he’d be able to tell where she was, and if he were in his own universe, he would not put a listening charm on her. Not without a warrant, at least. But magic wasn’t even known here, so he doubted that Gibbs could get him a warrant to put a magical bug on the beautiful, yet decidedly suspicious woman. One of the advantages of being able to spell metals and things like jewelry was that people often changed their clothes, so charms he wove into clothing could be hit or miss since people changed clothes often. But something like a Star of David, a symbol of faith and possibly something with sentimental value, it looked like something this woman kept on her person at all times, even if she wasn’t able to have it around her neck. Tony wove the same charms into the metal bits that held Jenny Shepard’s pearl necklace together so he could spy on her as well. Even if she took it off at night and wore a different necklace the next day – women and their jewelry and accessories did make things difficult for someone like him – but he would at least be able to keep tabs on her for the day. He could always spell other jewelry tomorrow.

He didn’t know why, but something about the redhead immediately had his hackles rising, and Tony was not someone who ignored his instincts. Especially since Gibbs had known this woman intimately, and yet she wasn’t an ex-wife. Tony immediately took a dislike to her just for that. While his Gibbs hadn’t married him, he and Gibbs’ three ex-wives had had a lovely relationship together, discussing their fatal mistake of falling for such a bastard. Gibbs hadn’t even known about the club that Tony belonged to, and this woman, this Jenny Shepard, wasn’t part of their club in the other universe, which meant that either Gibbs had kept his relationship with her secret, or she had, or it had been kept secret by mutual agreement. Which did not bode well for _anybody_.

So Tony lurked and listened, learning that the Mossad woman had brought the director a lead for an op that had apparently just been successfully completed. And that she was trying to make Gibbs doubt Ari’s guilt, that Ari was still playing on their team, accomplishing their goals. But Tony could pick out her heartbeat, against the necklace laying right over her heart, and her heartbeat tripped before it accelerated. This woman was either lying, or she was telling Gibbs something she only hoped was true. Tony couldn’t tell which it was. But she was definitely not telling the whole truth.

Luckily, Gibbs wasn’t falling for it, even if Kate was trying to play devil’s advocate. He sent Kate to follow the woman, in case she led him to Ari so he could go and bring him in to autopsy. Tony grinned approvingly to himself at that. Maybe this Gibbs wasn’t that different from his Gibbs after all. At least not in the ways that mattered.

Tony decided to remain in the shadows for as long as he could, so he quietly witnessed Abby discussing what kind of weapon Ari had used. Gibbs had told her to narrow it down to the Bravo Fifty-Ones and when pushed, he revealed that snipers called Bravo Fifty-Ones a ‘Kate’, which would have absolutely meant that he’d been gunning for Kate all along.

He wasn’t around to witness it in person as he was hanging around the squad room floor at the time, but he saw that Ducky was leaving the Navy Yard, despite the fact that Gibbs had ordered everyone not to leave. As far as Tony knew, only Kate was out in the world, shadowing the Mossad woman. Ducky was behaving suspiciously, trying to hide from Gibbs and the bullpen as he left. But Gibbs realized that Ducky had left, and McGee started tracing phone calls to Ducky’s cell and to Autopsy. He found that a phone call had come in from Gerald Jackson, and Gibbs ordered McGee to get a GPS fix on their phones.

Tony decided to wait in the Navy Yard to see what else he could find out, letting Gibbs go off looking for Ducky on his own. He wasn’t sure if it was the best idea, but he figured that Ari still had Kate and Abby and Jenny, and McGee to kill off first before he took Gibbs out. Odds were, Gibbs was actually probably not in immediate danger. But these others were, and he wanted to listen to what the hell was going on in the building and eavesdrop on both Ziva David and Jenny Shepard via his magical bugs, and sitting in a quiet and dark utility closet in the Navy Yard was best for that sort of eavesdropping.

He sat and focused on the Mossad woman and learned that Ziva had fake passports for Ari, and she made plans to switch robes with another operative as she had made Kate so the other operative could deliver them to someone else who would ultimately deliver it to Ari. He also learned that the new NCIS director had a lot of boring meetings, although interestingly, she had a short conversation with Mossad Director Eli David. Something cryptic that didn’t tell him much, other than the fact that Ziva was much more connected than originally thought, being that she was the Mossad director’s daughter. And that _Jenny_ was also on a first name basis with _Eli_. That made his skin prickle.

In this way Tony stayed and watched and listened to all the developments. Gerald Jackson turned up safe and sound, but he told them that Ari had kidnapped him, insisted that he _hadn’t_ killed Tony, and made Ducky come out and exchange himself for Gerald. Kate was on Ziva David’s tail, but it wasn’t particularly productive. Gibbs had been following the other operative, the one with the alternate passports for Ari, which Kate had gotten a look at and an alert called in to stop Ari from using these to leave the country. But he’d been forced to stop following the operative as Ducky’s Morgan was driving down the street in the other direction, and he’d stopped to rescue Ducky.

Who turned out to have been just set free and told to drive down the street. Which meant that Ari now had possession of the alternate identification and the other operative had gotten away, using Ducky to distract Gibbs from his pursuit.

Tony eavesdropped on Kate’s conversation with Ziva. Neither woman was ever going to be friendly to each other, Tony thought, and it calmed him that he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t going to just trust Officer David. Tony was also lucky enough to be able to listen in on the conversation Gibbs had with Jenny Shepard when he invited her to join him for a stakeout. And there it was, Ziva had saved Shepard’s life and had forged a connection with her in that way.

Tony’s eyes narrowed as he pondered this, continuing to listen to the chatter between Gibbs and Shepard. He was ready to claw her eyes out because she kept alternating between trying to order Gibbs around and fucking _flirting_ with him, and even though neither this Gibbs nor his own universe’s Gibbs was technically _Tony’s_ Gibbs, still, he didn’t like hearing someone try to manipulate Gibbs in this way. It left a bad taste in his mouth. He was no precog, but he didn’t need precognition to know that she was bad news.

Something wicked this way cometh, he thought to himself.

And so, he also overheard it when the guy in the SUV that was purported to be Ari’s was shot and killed by Gibbs and witnessed by the NCIS director herself. And the guy they’d shot was decidedly _not_ Ari Haswari. Which meant that now, everyone was clearing Ari of the crime of murdering the Tony of this universe, even though Tony’s magic had determined that the casings had belonged to Ari. The connection and the dark intentions were clear. But of course, magic wasn’t admissible here. They had manipulated it so the evidence was pointing in a direction that Gibbs did not like. And when Fornell gave Gibbs secret intelligence that Hamas was trying to build a nuclear weapon and that Ari was supposed to deliver the trigger and the plutonium and was behind schedule. Tony was so carefully cloaked that he was even in MTAC watching Gibbs confront Ziva David, sow seeds of doubt in her head, and bait the hook.


	5. Chapter 5

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Ch5.jpg)

**Chapter Five**

Gibbs hadn’t been able to find Tony – Damien – very easily. The tattooed figure had just silently walked out of some dark corner and tapped his shoulder in a quiet hallway, making him jump. Not many people could sneak up on Gibbs, but apparently this other Tony had some special abilities. They had a hushed conversation about what was going on, but he could tell that Tony was keeping some things to himself. He wasn’t getting a full report, the way his own Tony would have given him. But this Tony was looking at things with both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask what it was Tony didn’t want to talk to him about. He could probably guess, though. Tony’s tone had not been pleasant when he mentioned Jenny’s name, and while Gibbs didn’t disagree with him, at least he had a history with the woman and felt as if he had a right to judge her. He wasn’t sure what it was about her that Tony disliked.

But on the plus side, it was comforting that Tony agreed with him – that Gibbs’ gut was correct. Ari Haswari _was_ the guilty party, no matter that they had set up some poor schmuck to be the patsy. Interestingly, the Gibbs in this Tony’s universe also had these feelings that were also invariably correct, but his gifts were something named and recognized: precognition and empathy. It also helped that Tony assured him that his gut was right in this instance. Tony could corroborate it because he had been able to confirm the casings’ connection to Ari and the dark intent behind them after he’d woken up from Ducky drugging him with cough medicine. Gibbs had to choke back his laugh at the disgruntled look on the man’s face when he admitted that Ducky had gotten the better of him. Gibbs had to wonder what piercings he had been forced to remove to ensure that the x-ray was accurate. And Gibbs wondered again if the man had a piercing on his dick, given the wanding at security that time.

Neither man trusted either of the women that had entered the picture. Not Ziva David, and not Jenny Shepard, and Gibbs’ gut was in full agreement with this. Gibbs tried not to think about where his ex-lover might have gotten derailed, but he couldn’t argue with his gut, and he hadn’t been blind to how Ziva David had greeted her by not just her first name but an affectionate contraction of it, while Gibbs had been told to address her as ‘Madam Director’. Just by that, he knew where he stood in relation to this Ziva David, the controller or handler of Ari Haswari. He had to wonder how much research they had done on him and his team, and no doubt whatever Ziva David knew she would have passed on to Ari. So in essence, if they targeted anyone on his team, it was probably either on her say so, or based on the research she had procured that pointed out the targets that would make Gibbs the most vulnerable.

Of course, taking Kate out would have been the logical first move. The lone woman on his team. They probably thought that Tony taking the bullet meant for Kate affected Gibbs less than if Kate had died. But of course, no one had known about the feelings that Gibbs harbored for Tony, and the fact that Tony had been taken away from him was much more traumatic for him. He was just not able to fall apart at this time. Not while Ari was still out there, still able to take others that he loved and cared for away from him. Gibbs refused to lose anyone else to whatever schemes that Mossad had cooked up and gone sideways. He wasn’t going to let anyone else at NCIS be sacrificed to whatever plots they might be trying to engineer, and he would do this with or without Jenny Shepard’s support.

He and Tony agreed that they would have to trap Ari into coming after him in order for anyone to believe them. Tony would continue to observe and lurk in the shadows and be there whenever he was needed.

Gibbs finally had the chance to confront Officer David in Abby’s lab.

“Do you know why Ari left his brass behind?” Gibbs squatted down, eye level to each container that had one of Ari’s casing inside, arranged in a row on Abby’s table.

“You are a broken tape, Gibbs,” David scoffed.

“Record, broken record,” Kate sassed, although David ignored her.

“A sniper's brass is like signing your signature. That's why a sniper always polices his brass,” Gibbs continued, ignoring the distractions. “Lapua. 308 casing. Boat-tail. Moly-coated full metal jacket bullet.”

“That's what you shot as a Marine sniper. At Mossad, we use Sierra 6.5 hollow points,” David tossed her hair, trying for nonchalance.

“How do you know what I shot, Miss David?” Gibbs asked, and the dark-haired woman looked uncomfortable.

“She profiled you for Ari,” Jenny jumped in.

“Not just Gibbs,” Kate complained. “That's how you knew where I was born and went to school.”

“Ari's missions involved NCIS. As his controller, of course, I did dossiers on everyone he might interact with,” David tried to shrug it off.

“It's S.O.P. at Komemiute,” Jenny added.

And why the hell was the director of NCIS standing up for Mossad when Mossad had profiled NCIS agents, finding weaknesses to exploit? Gibbs glared at Jenny, and she swallowed, but tried to stand her ground, even though she knew she didn’t have a leg to stand on.

“Director. Abs. Kate,” Gibbs kept his tone civil as he herded them towards the exit. “Give me a minute alone with Miss David, please?”

He waited until they filed out before he stood close enough to whisper at her, in case anyone was trying to listen in. “You found out about my first wife and my daughter.”

David sighed. “Yes. I'm sorry,” she finally admitted it.

“Then we know why Ari is shooting at women, don't we?” Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

“If he wanted you to know he is the sniper, why didn't he use your rifle? An M40?” David argued.

“The Bravo 51 he fired is called a ‘Kate’,” Gibbs growled. “He was aiming for Kate but he got Tony. Make no mistake. They are neither of them disposable.”

There was a long pause as David thought about this. “I still don't believe Ari is the sniper,” she finally said, and Gibbs couldn’t help the snort of disgust that escaped him. “But what you have said should be investigated,” David continued, giving him the stink eye.

“Well, when the media gets wind of this, it's going to create a furor,” Gibbs shrugged.

“You're threatening to go to the media?”

“No, not me. This can stay between Mossad and NCIS.”

“In exchange for what?” David was savvy, he’ll give her that. They started them young in Mossad. “Setting up Ari for you to kill?”

“No,” Gibbs said firmly. “Setting _me_ up for Ari. And if I'm wrong about this, he won't show up.”

“And if you're right?” David asked.

“Then I'm counting on you to back me up,” Gibbs walked away from her, confidently turning his back to her. He could hear his Tony arguing with him about this, how he couldn’t just go out there with no protection and no backup. He remembered how much Tony had whined and complained about the time that Gibbs went in undercover as the Marine Recruiting Officer while a spate of them were being killed, and that Gibbs refused to wear a vest, trusting only in the bullet resistant glass. Tony had been frothing at the mouth at that. And Tony had also been the one to take the killer out in that instance.

Thinking of that made Gibbs miss him. Miss his presence. Miss his constant yabba yabba. He could hear what Tony would be telling him right now, about setting himself up for this. Ari wouldn’t be able to resist this. But what if Gibbs lost control of the situation? There was no such thing as Kevlar for his head because that’s what Ari would aim for. Not that Gibbs would have worn Kevlar at all.

He chuckled to himself, hearing the complaints that Tony would have word vomited at him. And the chuckles turned to shudders, and Gibbs had to stop before he started sobbing. His eyes burned with unshed tears. Tony was _dead_. He would never vomit anything at anyone ever again, not words, not actual vomit. Nothing. And that was something that Gibbs just couldn’t wrap his head around. He didn’t know how he was going to continue when Tony wasn’t in this world anymore. When he wouldn’t see those twinkling green eyes, those naughty grins, those dimples ever again. When he wouldn’t hear his uproarious laugh anymore or even just his voice.

Shit. Gibbs needed to get a hold of himself so he could focus on this trap they were setting. He needed to be present and all in if he had any hope of coming out of this alive. Not that it would be that much of a tragedy if he didn’t make it, but he knew that if he died, then Ari would go after the rest of his people and Jenny would just let it happen. She would continue to refuse to believe that he was a danger, and Ari would be able to pick them off, one by one. Gibbs was not going to allow that to happen. He didn’t know which side Jenny had chosen. All he knew was that she had been standing up for Officer David and Ari Haswari, and she had seemed much too familiar with the Komemiute’s SOP. What did that say about her loyalties? Gibbs didn’t know but he sure as hell wasn’t going to trust her, especially since the other universe Tony didn’t seem to trust her either.

There was nothing else to be done right now. He would have to continue with this plan to take Ari off the board for real. Even if he didn’t make it, as long as Ari died, too, that would work for him.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Gibbs opened the door to the basement and clattered down the stairs, dumping the huge bouquet of flowers on the worktable. He opened the long drawer where he kept his M40 and saw that the space was empty.

“Are you looking for this, Jethro?” a voice asked silkily.

Gibbs whirled to see Ari, sitting on a stool, watching him, his M40 in Ari’s hand. His heart started beating a little faster, wondering how this would go.

“I want you to know I wish I hadn't had to shoot Anthony. I certainly didn’t mean to shoot your dear Anthony. I was aiming for Caitlin.”

“Why did you?” Gibbs asked.

“To cause you pain.”

“I piss you off _that_ much?”

“Not you. My father,” Ari sighed. “You have the misfortune of reminding me of the bastard.”

“He didn't marry your mother, huh?” Gibbs couldn’t help asking. Not to provoke, but he wanted to hear more of what the hell made this man tick. Keeping him talking would help.

“That's what makes _me_ a bastard, not him,” Ari shrugged. “From the moment of my birth, he groomed me to be one thing, his mole in Hamas. He sent me to Edinburgh to become a doctor so I could work in the Gaza camps alongside my mother. When he had her killed, I had no trouble joining the lz Adin al-Kassam.”

“You don't really believe your father had your mother killed?” Gibbs couldn’t bring himself to believe that someone would be that callous to their own child. A child was precious. A child was to be loved and cherished, not to be used as a weapon of mass destruction. The idea that a man would procreate with his enemy as a way to infiltrate the enemy and bring it down with his own child – who would be a traitor to anyone he loved, there was no two ways about it, this idea was _abhorrent_. Gibbs couldn’t fathom someone so calculative.

Ari glared at him for his naïveté.

“It was a retaliatory Israeli strike on a day I was in Tel Aviv, visiting him,” he spoke slowly. Gibbs could practically see the deep seated hatred and anger lying beneath the calm surface of the man sitting before him, holding his M40 as if it was _his_ dear friend and not Gibbs’. “After decades of planning, he had his mole in Hamas. He never knew how much I hated him. I wish I could see his face when he realizes he created not a mole but a monster eager to strike at the heart of Mossad and Israel.”

“Yeah, I almost feel sorry for you,” Gibbs shook his head. No matter how terrible he thought Ari’s father was, it was Ari was who was dragging collateral damage into his not unjustified war against his father. It was _Ari_ who had shot and killed his Tony. It was _Ari_ who had decided that Gibbs’ team was the right collateral damage to strike back at his own father.

“And I for you,” not that it apparently mattered to Ari. He looked not even the slightest bit penitent for what he had done. “When Ziva told me you were placing flowers on the roof where Anthony died, I couldn't believe it. I would have believed it more had I succeeded in killing Caitlin. Such a romantic touch, for Agent Anthony DiNozzo? I think not.”

Gibbs flinched at that.

“Aaaaahhh…” Ari nodded, a knowing smile crossing his lips. “Perhaps Anthony _should_ have been my target after all? Apparently he was a _Very_ Special Agent.”

“Tony was my Senior Field Agent,” Gibbs muttered woodenly. He didn’t have to sell his grief to Ari. His heart was undeniably broken.

“Not _just_ your Senior Field Agent.”

“I _never_ crossed any lines with him,” Gibbs insisted. “_Never_.”

“Oh, but you wanted to. And you regret that, do you not?” Ari even looked sympathetic. “You must wonder about the possibilities that are now closed to you. What it could have been? If you had let go of your first wife and your daughter? You could have been happy with Anthony, no?”

Gibbs pursed his lips, mostly to keep from ordering him to stop saying Tony’s name. This man didn’t deserve to even speak Tony’s name. Tony was an infinitely better man than him, than Gibbs even, and neither of them should sully his good name. He glared at Ari, wishing he could kill the man with just a look.

“So, Anthony DiNozzo gets red roses…” Ari smiled, looking at the flowers on the table. “How romantic. Love. Romance. Gardenias and gladioli? These flowers must have some meaning, given how you apparently feel about your Anthony.”

“He was never mine,” Gibbs growled.

“My sympathies,” Ari nodded. “I have sacrificed love for my work as well.”

Gibbs could say nothing about that.

“But as for today, it was almost too good to pass up. Almost.”

“What’s the scenario here, then?”

“I need you to commit suicide with your own rifle.”

Gibbs rolled his eyes.

“You never did give me enough credit in our game, Gibbs,” Ari gave him a condescending look. “I knew it was a trap even before Ziva told me you asked her to cover you. You'd never trust Ziva. And you need to kill me to taste the sweetness of revenge.”

“I've killed enough men in my life, Ari,” Gibbs sat heavily on the worktable, his heart rate steady. He didn’t quite know what would happen next, but he was working to release his doubts. Things were going to work out. One way or another. “It's gonna be just as sweet watching you die.”

Ari shouldered the rifle, taking aim at Gibbs. “Sorry to spoil your…”

A shot rang out, cutting Ari off mid-sentence, and he fell onto his back, the way Tony had on that rooftop. Blood began pooling behind his head. Gibbs looked up and watched as Ziva David came down the stairs, gun still drawn, her face pale.

“His father is a deputy director in Mossad?” Gibbs had to ask.

“Yes,” she was outwardly calm, but Gibbs could see her pulse racing in her neck.

“Not David?”

“Yes. He's my half-brother.” She holstered her gun and sat, looking down at the dead man.

Well. So the rat bastard bred a son to be his secret weapon in Hamas, and he bred a daughter to be his blade for Mossad. And he’d engineered it so that this woman had to kill her own half-brother. Gibbs couldn’t even quantify what kind of monster Eli David was to do this, because Gibbs had had one daughter, and she had been the light of his life. He couldn’t imagine sharpening her like a tool and aiming her at his enemies. Even if she had lived, and Shannon had not, and he had been filled with the need to avenge Shannon’s death, Kelly would not have been involved in that. At all. Children were to be protected and loved, not weaponized and used. Death was not enough of a punishment for a man like Eli David.

“What now?” Gibbs asked her.

“I will take him back to Israel and we will bury him,” David said softly.

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Tony_1k.jpg)

“And then what?” Tony’s voice surprised Gibbs, and he turned to see Tony step out of the shadows. But it wasn’t the other Tony with the tattoos and piercings. It was _his_ Tony. The one who had died on that rooftop, taking a bullet that had been meant for Kate.

“You are _dead_,” David stared at him, eyes wide with shock.

“Reports of my demise were grossly exaggerated,” Tony shrugged one shoulder, his movement concise and elegant.

Gibbs could only stare at him. _Was_ this _Tony_? Was it his ghost? It wasn’t his imagination since Officer David was clearly interacting with him. What the hell was going on here?

“But I _saw_ you take the bullet in your throat,” she stammered. “With my own eyes.”

Tony smiled, sexy and dangerous. “You _saw_ me die, huh?”

“Were you with Ari in his nest?” Gibbs growled at the petite woman. “_You knew_ that he was going to kill Kate.”

David seemed unable to tear her eyes away from Tony. “You are dead,” she repeated.

“Plus, don’t forget to tell Gibbs that you had Director Shepard show you my corpse, in Ducky’s morgue,” Tony’s smile widened. “You had to make sure, to figure out how to write this report for your father. Isn’t that right?”

“Jenny showed you Tony’s body?” Gibbs gasped. “What’s her involvement in this?”

“She is eager to please and will open her legs for anyone she thinks will further her own agenda,” David sniffed. “You. Me. My _father_,” she sneered.

Tony clapped his hands and laughed, and Gibbs tried not to flinch. It was not a nice laugh, and it wasn’t one he’d heard come from Tony, at least not his Tony. “So… the new NCIS director is in Mossad’s pocket?”

“She was to insert me into the MCRT after Kate was killed.”

“So Deputy Director David ordered Agent Caitlin Todd killed, is that what you’re saying?” Tony asked.

“Yes.”

“But why would Ari carry out this order, if he hated your father so much?” Tony was watching her intently.

“Because _he_ didn’t know the order came from my father. I convinced him I was on his side and I suggested that Kate would be the best target, given Agent Gibbs’ first wife and daughter.”

“And whose side are you on? Your father’s?” Tony asked.

“I am on my own side. My father has caused so much death – my sister, my mother. Ari’s mother. And now my half-brother, Ari himself. My father cannot be trusted.”

“You’re blaming Ari’s death on him?” Gibbs asked. “You were the one who pulled the trigger.”

“Ari was in so much pain and he was so angry,” David sounded sad. “My father made him this way. He broke Ari into so many pieces, that I could not put him back together again, no matter how hard I tried. He is my brother and I tried to save him. But Ari would not stop until my father is dead, or Israel ruined. I cannot see my country ruined. I had to kill Ari.”

“And your father?”

“I will prevail eventually,” David gave them a cold-eyed stare. “My father is not the only one with patience and long term plans.”

Tony shook his head. “You are one fucked up family,” he told her.

David sighed, and looked first at Gibbs then at Tony. “Well, it looks like this is over and my story will have to change. You must both die now.” She raised her gun, aiming it at Tony.

“Not sure how you’re going to sell that one,” Gibbs shook his head.

“Lover’s quarrel? After Gibbs killed Ari for Tony, Tony rejects your offer,” she stared at them. “To be more than friends. I see the red roses in this bouquet. Anthony DiNozzo was a womanizer. He would never accept advances from a man.”

“You think I would ever reject Gibbs?” Tony scoffed. “Your dossier is incomplete, Officer David. We, in our profession, always have much to hide when it comes to sexuality. Do we not?” He smirked. “I would worship Gibbs’ body with mine. I would give myself to him, whatever he wanted, for however long he wanted me. I am his. I’ve always been his. He was never ready to be mine, though.”

Gibbs couldn’t hear the lie in Tony’s words.

“Well, it is good thing no one but us is here to witness this,” David shrugged. “I can say whatever I like, after I shoot you both.”

“But I’m already dead,” Tony smiled. “You think shooting me again will work? What makes you think a bullet will harm me now?”

“Besides, there are people here to witness this. I recorded _everything_,” to Gibbs’ surprise, Kate stepped out of the shadows, holding a video camera. “And this camera is the kind that transmits, so there are copies at NCIS right now.”

With a frustrated cry, Ziva David fired, and Tony went down with a pained grunt. Gibbs smacked the gun out of her hand, tackled her, pushing her face down into the worktable. He kicked her gun further away and handcuffed her immediately.

“Damien!” Kate was on her knees by Tony’s body.

“Fuck. That fucking _hurts_,” he whined.

Both Gibbs and David turned, and saw Kate lift the shirt up, revealing Kevlar underneath with a bullet embedded in it.

“You OK?” Kate asked him.

“Yeah,” Tony, no, _Damien_, gasped. He wasn’t Gibbs’ Tony. He was the other Tony. “That might’ve broken a rib, but no bullet holes. Remind me to skip Pilates tomorrow.”

“Who _are_ you?” David practically screamed, as Kate helped to pull the prone man to his feet.

The man with Tony’s face smiled pleasantly, even as he hunched over, cradling his torso gently. “I’m Agent DiNozzo’s cousin. We’ve always been told we look very alike,” he grinned. “_Surprise_!” And of course, he had to do the jazz hands. It was so Tony like that it hurt Gibbs’ heart.

Gibbs couldn’t stop his heart from pounding as he stared at the spitting image of Tony. Of course he looked like Tony. He _was_ Tony. Gibbs realized that Abby must have slapped make up on him to hide his tattoos, and he’d taken his piercings out, or maybe he’d magicked himself to not look all inked up and pierced, Gibbs didn’t know. They’d used it to trap David, though. And revealed the perfidy of the newly appointed director of NCIS. Damn. Gibbs really had to rethink and give a lot of thought about his taste in women after Shannon died.

“Check her for all kinds of other goodies,” the man who looked and sounded exactly like Tony told Gibbs.

Gibbs stared at him.

“Gibbs. Man. You OK?” his expression turned to concern.

Gibbs had to mentally shake himself. He nodded.

Damien gave him a tentative smile. “She’s Komemiute. Probably has a bunch of nasty surprises secreted on her person.”

Gibbs nodded, and focused on the task at hand while Kate called it in.

“Call Morrow,” Gibbs told her.

“What?” Kate gave him a surprised look. “Why? He’s not our director anymore.”

“He needs to know about Shepard. He’ll inform the SecNav and they can do what needs to be done,” Gibbs told her.

“Right, of course,” Kate nodded, before running up the basement steps to make the call to the former NCIS director.

Gibbs searched the Mossad agent and found numerous weapons. Tony flicked his fingers and found a few others that maybe only magic would have revealed. Gibbs put all her items into a box. And just in case, Tony zip tied her hands and legs.

“Can’t be too sure,” he gave Gibbs a grin. “I don’t want another bullet in my ribs.”

“Or your throat.”

Tony shuddered.

“How can you not be him?” David kept asking.

“Shut up or I’m going to gag you,” Tony snarled at her. “I’m not part of Gibbs’ organization. I don’t need to play by their rules.”

Gibbs watched as their eyes met, and whatever David saw in Tony’s green eyes made her look away. Apparently, Tony had convinced her that he wasn’t the same guy that had been killed on the rooftop, and Gibbs could understand that. He didn’t know how to explain it but even though this man was fundamentally, and probably genetically Anthony DiNozzo Jr, he had had a different life and different experiences than his Tony had. He wasn’t exactly the same man. Gibbs had lost his Tony. But he couldn’t deny that he was still attracted to this Tony.

It was a day later, after people were rounded up – Jenny Shepard included – and Gibbs, his team, Ducky, Abby, Gerald, and Damien were formally interviewed and their statements taken by the SecNav’s people, people from Homeland, and the FBI, that Gibbs was finally free to go. He headed down to Autopsy. He needed to see his Tony one more time, because even though Damien had removed the makeup and put his piercings back on and was obviously no longer visually his Tony, seeing him looking so like the man he’d loved and lost had thrown him. He found that he was having trouble believing that his Tony had actually died, even though logically he knew it had happened.

He was about to walk into Autopsy when he saw that Kate, McGee and Damien were there, the drawer open and the dead Tony pulled out halfway.

“Told you he looked good,” Kate patted the junior agent.

“Ducky made him look good,” Damien agreed. He looked indescribably sad. “Ducky did what he could for him.”

Kate reached out and grabbed Damien’s arm, and she nodded.

“Your Probie wouldn't believe me, Tony,” she told the cold dead body of Gibbs’ Anthony DiNozzo. “Thought you'd look like _Return of the Living Dead_. Don’t you tell anyone I made a movie reference.” Kate glared at the body in the drawer, as if he would rise and start arguing with her again.

“Did _not_,” McGee objected.

“Don't lie to the dead, McGee,” Damien reprimanded him with a smile.

“That’s not nice,” Kate agreed.

“I was a _little_ afraid,” McGee pouted.

“Kid was _terrified_,” Kate corrected, rolling her eyes. “But it took a lot of guts to come down here. Showed how much he cared for you.”

There was a long moment where Gibbs saw Kate put a hand on the dead Tony’s shoulder, and tears well in her eyes.

“I really did like you, Tony. A lot. Even if you superglued me to everything and never stopped teasing me,” McGee’s voice was soft, but Gibbs clearly heard the words.

Kate blinked and tears fell from her eyes. “We’ll give you a good send off,” she vowed. “You’re the best partner I ever had.”

“Won’t his dad be organizing his funeral?” McGee asked.

Damien snorted in disgust. “That asshole couldn’t care less unless there was something in it for him,” he spat out.

“_We’re_ Tony’s family,” Kate sniffled. “He was family to me.”

“And me,” McGee agreed.

Damien nodded. “I think Tony would much prefer a funeral where people who loved him were there instead of his douchebag of a father.”

“We’ll figure out where to bury him,” Kate said. “Somewhere where we can visit him. He’d hate to be lonely.”

Gibbs thought about the empty plot next to Shannon that he’d bought way back when. He’d fully planned to join them as soon as he could, and that was why he’d bought the extra plot. But maybe he could bury Tony with his girls, with the only other people he’d loved and that would be OK. Tony deserved to be with friends, after all, and not all alone in some random plot. It would make it easier for Gibbs, to be able to visit them all in one go.

And one day, when Gibbs died, he could just be cremated, and his ashes buried with his family. He didn’t need a whole entire plot of his own. He’d lived his life so alone anyway, it would be nice to not be alone in a coffin for all eternity.

In his head, Gibbs could hear the echo of his Tony’s voice, laughing at him, good-naturedly teasing him that he’d had to die for Gibbs to admit that he loved him, and that he’d be buried with love, even though he hadn’t lived with love. He saw Shannon embracing Tony and both of them waving to him, wishing him well. And both of them pointing to Damien, who was with Kate and McGee, looking down at Tony’s body.

Gibbs didn’t know what Damien’s plans were for the future, and whether he could magic his way back to his own universe, and if he couldn’t if he would even stay in the area, but he knew that he was going to do everything he could to convince him to stay. Gibbs had already lost one Tony, he wasn’t prepared to lose another one. Maybe this Tony didn’t love _him_, but Gibbs already knew that if he stopped controlling his own emotions so drastically, that he could fall in love with this Tony. He could tell that even with what little he knew about the man. If he had his way, he would get to know this Tony, befriend him, learn who he was, and in that process, he knew he would fall in love with him. And even if this Tony couldn’t love him back, Gibbs didn’t care. As long as they could be friends and that this Tony wouldn’t leave.

Gibbs couldn’t take losing anyone else.

He watched the three of them, continuing their conversation with the dead Tony on the slab, and he knew that he couldn’t let this Tony slip away from him, too.


	6. Chapter 6

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Ch6.jpg)

**Chapter Six**

A dull thumping woke Tony up from a deep sleep. He was sprawled awkwardly on the floor, where he had several books open and papers scattered, filled with drawings and diagrams that he’d sketched, and lists that he’d scribbled. Half remembered spells and ingredients for them. He was trying to cobble together a spell to transport himself from one universe to another, and after a month, nothing was looking good.

The thumping began again, and he realized that someone was banging on his front door. Or well, the other Tony’s front door, since he was squatting in what was technically not his own apartment. The owner of this particular apartment was, unfortunately, deceased.

“Yeah, coming,” he called out, pulling himself upright with a loud groan. Shit. He was too fucking old to be sleeping on the floor. He rocked his head from side to side, cracking his neck, as he padded to the door. Yawning, his eyes weren’t even really open when he unlocked the door and flung it open.

“Tony,” Gibbs held out a six pack of beer and pulled a piece of scrap paper off his cheek.

Tony yawned again, taking the beer and the paper, gesturing Gibbs in, shuffling behind Gibbs as they walked to the couch in the living room. Tony tried to ignore the mess of books and papers and writing implements that was scattered on the floor.

Gibbs gave his working area a significant look. “Any luck?” he asked, a little too casually.

Tony snorted. “Sure. None of it is good, though.”

Gibbs gave him a small smile. “Maybe it’s a sign.”

Tony gave him a suspicious look, watching as Gibbs grabbed the six-pack from him, opened two bottles and handed him one before he took a seat on Tony’s couch. “What do you mean?” he settled down at the end of the couch, tucking a leg underneath himself and taking a big mouthful of beer.

Gibbs had brought him his favorite microbrew. Tony gave him another suspicious look, wondering what the man was trying to butter him up for. It was confusing, sometimes, because this Gibbs acted so differently from his own Gibbs at times, and yet was so similar at others. His Gibbs would never have tried to bribe him into doing something. He would have demanded it, he was Tony’s boss after all, no matter what their personal relationship might be at that point in time. Nothing ever trumped that boss-subordinate relationship that dictated his Gibbs’ behavior not just to him, but to everyone else, as well.

“A sign of what?” Tony persisted.

Gibbs shrugged and grunted.

Tony rolled his eyes. Gibbs was here to say something but he was having trouble getting his words out. Gosh. A Gibbs that had trouble expressing himself verbally? Whoop de doo. What a _novelty_. And he’d learned that with this Gibbs, he just needed to keep silent for a while, and then the man would speak. If you could call it speaking. Still, he usually managed to get his point across.

“A sign that you should stay here,” Gibbs finally got out.

“_What_?” Tony gaped at him.

“You should stay,” Gibbs stated clearly, meeting his eyes.

“But I’m not your Tony,” Tony felt compelled to point out.

“I know that,” Gibbs rubbed the back of his neck, a tell for both this Gibbs as well as his Gibbs that this conversation was making the man uncomfortable. “I know my Tony’s dead.”

The sorrow in the man’s voice made Tony sigh. “Yeah. OK,” he agreed.

“But you can stay. You should stay.”

“As _who_?”

“You can be Damien.”

“I can’t stay,” Tony sighed. “My fake identities aren’t holding in this universe,” he explained. It would have been different in his own universe. He could go to ground and set himself up as someone new, no problem. But he was severely constrained in this universe. He was probably lucky that magic worked at all here. He had no doubt that there would be some other universe out there where magic wasn’t something that would work, and he would be even more screwed there, with absolutely no hope of returning home, nor a real way of staying and contributing given that his powers were so much a part of him that being stripped of it would have been traumatic, to say the least.

Unfortunately though, here, their Tony DiNozzo’s credit cards had been canceled after his death became official, and Tony had raided the last of this Tony’s stashes of cash. He would be running out of funds before too long. He’d been lucky that he and this universe’s Tony were apparently equally paranoid and kept stashes of cash around the apartment, and even around the city. It was uncanny that most of Tony’s own stashes in the other universe also were this universe’s Tony’s stashes as well. But even that was finite, and Tony had been spending the money trying to buy some old books and scouring the internet for books on lore and magic and interdimensional portals. Yeah. Try saying that with a straight face and not getting fleeced like a rube. But what else could he do?

“What’s the alternative? You half ass some spell and kill yourself trying to get back to your own universe?” Gibbs asked.

Tony shrugged. “That’s one possible outcome, sure,” he agreed.

“What other outcomes are there?”

“Well, the ideal of course, is for me to figure out a spell that works, and I go back home to my own universe.”

“We live in the real world, Tony. That’s the best-case scenario.”

“You already came up with the worst-case scenario,” Tony huffed. Tony could very well die trying to get himself to his universe of origin, sure.

“Middle ground?”

“I come up with a spell that works, but I end up in a universe that isn’t mine,” Tony shrugged.

“How many universes do you think exist in parallel?” Gibbs asked, his tone curious.

“Infinite, if what I’m reading is accurate,” Tony sighed and scrubbed his face.

“So… you could spend the rest of your life, bouncing from universe to universe, trying to get back to your own?”

Tony blew out a long breath. “Theoretically, yeah. Sure.”

Gibbs gave him a long look. “What’s the probability of the best-case scenario as the outcome?”

Tony bit his lip and glared at Gibbs.

“One out of the infinite number of universes out there?” Gibbs guessed.

Tony gave him a slow nod, pouting mutinously. When Gibbs put it like that, it really did seem like an endeavor that was too much, even for him. Especially since he didn’t have the wealth of magical lore to rely on like he would back in his own universe. He didn’t have magical councils and academics he could call upon to help him here. Not really. They didn’t even believe in magic here and just admitting to believing in magic was enough to make people think you were a nutjob.

Maybe the supposed worst-case scenario really was the best-case scenario, since that would mean that he wouldn’t suffer for very long. Unless he just got caught in an infinite loop and just existed in limbo without reappearing in another universe at all. Death would be better than that.

Shit. This was getting worse and worse. Tony hadn’t allowed himself to think of all the things that could go wrong and this was a problem.

“Look, you should stay here.”

“In this universe?”

Gibbs nodded. “And you can stay in this apartment.”

Tony threw up his arms. “And do _what_? Live on _what_? I am not some charity case.”

“Abby already knows who you are,” Gibbs kept his tone reasonable, which for whatever reason grated on Tony’s nerves. Gibbs should be yelling and barking orders at him, demanding things instead of reasoning with him. But this wasn’t his Gibbs. This was a Gibbs that had apparently broken even more after his universe’s Tony had died. “She’s already building you a new identity. She’s making Damien Paddington real.”

Tony sighed. Abby. That had been quite the complication. She had figured out that he was actually a Tony DiNozzo from a different universe, and she’d sneakily proven it scientifically by comparing his DNA to their dead Tony’s, which was unsurprisingly, identical. And then she’d confronted him with it, yelling at him for not telling her the truth.

“I’m going to tell Gibbs on you!” Abby had yelled, with her office door tightly shut.

Tony just blinked at her, not sure how to react.

“Fuck! He _already_ knows, doesn’t he?” Abby yelled, throwing her arms up. “What is wrong with you people. You know you can trust Abby, right? I’m not going to tell anyone. And besides, who’d believe me even if I told them that you were also Tony DiNozzo? We just fucking buried him last week, OK?”

And then came the crying, and Tony had had to comfort her, and reassure her that he was fine, and he’d just been somehow transported to her universe when he’d taken the bullet. But they had had to pinky swear that Tony wasn’t just going to go back to his own universe without saying goodbye to her, and then there had been even more tears. It had not been pretty. Tony barely got out of there unscathed.

“Why would she do that?” Tony had to ask.

“She’s giving you Anthony as a middle name, so it wouldn’t be too weird if some people accidentally called you Tony,” Gibbs said apologetically.

“Couldn’t talk her out of it, huh?” Tony asked wryly.

“You know her,” Gibbs sighed.

Tony agreed. His own Abby would have done the same thing and thought that it was the funniest trick to play. He drank more of the beer. What else could he do at this point?

“Tony… _my_ Tony, that is,” Gibbs gave him a guilty look, “he left me just about everything in his will.”

Right. Gibbs had been invited to the reading of Tony’s will earlier that day. It surprised Tony though, that this Tony had left Gibbs everything, even without the kind of relationship that he had enjoyed with his Gibbs. If ‘enjoyed’ was the right word in this context. But apparently, this Tony had the same devotion to Gibbs that he had had to his, minus the literally being fucked over repeatedly part.

“Was _he_ there?” Tony wrinkled his nose.

“Your father?”

Tony nodded.

“Yeah,” Gibbs said shortly.

“I take it he didn’t take the news of Tony leaving you everything well?”

Gibbs gave him an evil grin. “Nope,” he said smugly.

“Bet he threatened to sue you.”

Gibbs laughed. “Oh yeah. Then your lawyer read the codicil that said that if DiNozzo Senior sued me, then he would release some information on him, something that sounded innocent to me, but would apparently land him in federal prison for a long, long time.”

Tony raised an eyebrow at that. “I like your Tony’s style, blackmailing Senior from the grave,” he grinned.

“He was something else,” Gibbs gave him a sad smile. “Anyway, other than asking me to continue funding his underprivileged youth basketball team, I’m free do to whatever I want with what he left me.”

“I can’t imagine he left you much,” Tony raised an eyebrow. Sure, he had money socked away back in his own universe, but while it wasn’t insignificant, it wasn’t a fortune either. He’d had to work hard for his money. Senior had cut him off when he was twelve. “Didn’t Senior cut your Tony off when he was twelve?”

“Senior did,” Gibbs nodded. “But apparently, Tony came into Paddington money when he turned thirty.”

Tony gaped at him. “_Paddington_ money? My mother’s family wanted nothing to do with me, because my mother defied them to marry my fuck up conman of a father. That asshole taints every single thing he touches, so I don’t blame them one bit.”

Gibbs shrugged. “Apparently in this universe, your mother left you a secret trust fund that Tony came into when he turned thirty. It was with your grandad Paddington’s firm, so they knew about it. And they added to it after she died, wanting you to be OK, despite Senior’s machinations. So it’s some pretty serious money we’re talking.”

“And I didn’t _leave_ when I got the money? _He_ didn’t leave, I mean?” Tony couldn’t get over it. Their Tony had stayed even though he had his fingers in the Paddington fortune.

Gibbs shook his head.

“You didn’t know about this?”

Gibbs shook his head again. “He kept this to himself.”

“Fuck,” Tony mused.

“I want to make sure the charities and organizations that Tony cared about continue to be funded,” Gibbs said softly. “That’s important to me. But there’s no reason I can’t sign over this apartment, and a lot of the money to you.”

“I don’t want _his_ money!” Tony sputtered.

“I don’t need it,” Gibbs shrugged. “And technically, you’re Tony. So it’s _your_ money, anyway.”

“But I didn’t get any Paddington money when I turned thirty. Not in my universe.”

“We already know there are differences between universes. Maybe you would have gotten yours in a few years, and maybe you don’t get any money at all there. Abby said we can’t predict that kind of thing.”

Tony sighed. “So, you think I should stay and live off of your Tony’s money?”

“Abby’s crafting you a really good identity,” Gibbs pursed his lips. “If you don’t want the money, you could just get a job. I can sign this apartment over to you and you can live here and work here. You could even get a job with NCIS if you wanted to. _I’d_ hire you.”

Tony shook his head. “I’m not your Tony.”

“I know. I’m not forcing you to take a job with me. But this identity Abby’s making you is good enough that you could get hired at any law enforcement agency, if that’s what you want. Or you could take your time and choose what else you might want to do, if you don’t want to stay in law enforcement.”

Tony fingered the _wuivre_, knowing exactly where the serpents’ heads were. Leave law enforcement? He’d inked into his skin his life’s work. The _wuivre_ said it all. It was unfathomable for him, leaving law enforcement. The only way he would leave was if he no longer had a choice. They would have to kick him out or take him out in a coffin. Or on his shield, if he were in Thermopylae with the _300_. Fuck. He wondered if Gerard Butler was as hot here as he was in his universe, and wondered if he – well, other he – owned _300_. Those Spartans had known duty. Duty of the kind that Tony’s tattoo meant. Tony had been too busy trying to figure out this spell and worry about his own survival to look through the dead Tony’s movie collection, and he really did need to check them out just to see what he had, and if the movies here were in any way different to the ones he knew from his previous universe.

“Did those fucking snakes move?” Gibbs moved closer, peering at his neck, and Tony could feel his hot breath on his skin, giving him goosebumps.

“They might have,” Tony blushed. “They do that sometimes, especially if I’m stressed.”

And he was stressed. And now he was lustful. Because Gibbs had breathed on him. Shit. He was not this man’s Tony. He had to keep remembering that.

Gibbs’ calloused thumb fingering his neck, fingering the serpents made him shudder and close his eyes, fighting hard to bite down and stop himself from moaning.

Gibbs flinched back at his reaction. “Sorry,” he murmured, pulling his hand back.

Tony opened his eyes and shook his head. He took a few breaths before he opened his eyes. “I’m not your Tony, Gibbs,” he said, and he knew he sounded sad. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“I know you’re not my Tony,” Gibbs told him gruffly. “You’re like him in so many ways, but you’re so different in so many other ways. You’re not him. I _know_ that.”

Tony raised an eyebrow, giving Gibbs a skeptical look.

“But I wonder if you know that I’m not your Gibbs?” Gibbs’ blue eyes, so familiar, yet not at all familiar, were serious.

“Of course I know you’re not my Gibbs,” Tony snapped.

“I mean, do you understand that the Gibbs who only fucked you in bed and never gave you his love, do you truly understand that that person is not me?” Gibbs asked him. “That Gibbs, who was your Gibbs, and who treated you so carelessly and cruelly, that man is not who I am.”

Tony stared at him in shock.

“I’m the Gibbs who was too chicken shit to take what life had to offer. I was the Gibbs who thought that if I didn’t put myself out there, didn’t try to be happy again after I lost my girls, that if I never risked my heart, I wouldn’t ever experience that kind of loss again,” Gibbs’ voice broke at that. “But even though I never got to have my Tony as anything but a friend and a colleague, my heart still broke when he died.”

Tony clasped Gibbs’ hand. This poor man. He’d suffered so many losses. And this Gibbs hadn’t even fully processed his wife and daughter’s deaths, since he hadn’t even told anyone about them.

“I know you’re not him,” Gibbs looked him straight in the eye, his gaze steady. “I know you’re you.”

“I’m not the Tony you want,” Tony whispered.

“You could be, if you let me get to know you. Get to know you, _this_ Tony. Not my Tony who died over a month ago. And you could get to know me, _this_ Gibbs, not the Gibbs from your past. Maybe you can look past whatever transgressions the other Gibbs did, and get to know who I am instead.”

“What are you saying?” Tony asked, heart pounding in his chest. “I don’t understand.”

“I want to ask you out,” Gibbs told him. “I want to date you and get to know you. Take you out to dinners and whatever fucking movies you want. I’ll sit through them with you. We can stay in sometimes, and I can cook for you. I want to learn who _you_ are, because even though you’re not _my_ Tony, that chemistry is still there between us. You feel it too, don’t you?”

Tony nodded dumbly.

“I don’t want to waste another chance at happiness. I’ve wasted enough time and chances, and I’m tired of doing that,” Gibbs cupped Tony’s face with his palm.

Tony could only stare at him. “I don’t know what to say…”

Gibbs smiled at him. “See? This is how I know you’re not my Tony. My Tony would’ve been in my lap, kissing me,” his smile turned sad. “He was always aware of the thing we had between us, but he didn’t want to break the rules.”

“Rule Twelve exists here?” Tony asked.

Gibbs laughed sadly and nodded. “Yup. That’s the one.”

Tony rolled his eyes.

“How did your Gibbs get past that rule if you and he were…” Gibbs finished the sentence by making a lewd gesture.

Tony snorted. “I never thought I’d ever see you do that,” he giggled.

Gibbs grinned at him.

“His Rule Twelve was ‘Never Date a Co-worker’.”

“Mine, too.”

“He never dated me. He just fucked me,” Tony felt himself blush as he admitted that, especially when this Gibbs looked incredibly regretful.

“He hurt you,” Gibbs murmured, gently caressing Tony’s face. “I’d break his nose for you if I could.”

Tony couldn’t help but laugh at that. Gibbs breaking the other Gibbs’ nose would have been something to see.

“And if it doesn’t work out between us, or if you don’t want to date me, I’m OK with that,” Gibbs continued. “If you don’t want to date me, or if we don’t work out, that doesn’t affect you staying in this universe, and here in DC. It’s not a condition. I’m not trying to put pressure on you. I just don’t want to not ask you, the Tony I’m well aware is from another universe, to take a chance with me and on me, while I had the opportunity. I’m tired of regrets.”

Tony gently clasped Gibbs hand in his, turned his palm up and he couldn’t help but drop a soft kiss on it.

Gibbs leaned in slowly, telegraphing his every move, before he pressed his lips on Tony’s, and they kissed, a soft, closed mouth, chaste, but the most tender and loving kiss that Tony had ever experienced. His eyes closed almost without his permission, and Gibbs’ lips fluttered against his. They continued this way for a few minutes before Gibbs pulled back, smiling at him.

“I know what I want,” he told Tony. “Now you need to decide what you want. There is no rush, no deadlines, and no conditions. But I think you should stay. You have me and Abby and Ducky. We know who you really are, so you can just be you with us. And you can be Tony’s cousin Damien to everyone else. Or you can choose to continue to try to find a way back to your universe, and Abby, Ducky and I would support you with that, too. We just want you to be happy. I think we all deserve that chance, don’t we?”

Tony stared at him and nodded.

“Good.” Gibbs leaned forward and kissed him softly. “I’m going home and you should go to bed. You look plum tuckered out. There’s no rush to get all your research done. With Tony’s inheritance, you can take your time and get it right, if that’s still what you want to do. You won’t be bound by whatever spare cash you’re scrounging from around here.”

Tony nodded.

“Don’t sleep on the floor, OK?” Gibbs smirked at him.

Tony rolled his eyes.

“Abby’s expecting you to take her out to lunch tomorrow so you take a break from what you might be doing and you do that or she will come looking for you,” Gibbs told him. He kissed Tony again. “And you call me when you’ve made your decision. Whatever that decision might be. I’ll support you, whatever you decide.”

Tony nodded.

After one last kiss, Tony found himself sitting alone on his couch, surveying the mess of books and papers and diagrams and spells on the floor. He rubbed the _wuivre_ around his neck with his index finger. He had some thinking to do. He sat there fingering his most important tattoo and let his mind wander for a while. He wanted this chance, too, it dawned on him. When Gibbs looked at him like that, and told him that he knew who Tony was, and more importantly, who he _wasn’t_, it meant something. Something important. This Gibbs wanted to get to know _him_. His own Gibbs hadn’t really cared about that. Only what he could do for Gibbs. It had been such a transactional relationship, and Tony wanted to explore the possibility of a different sort of relationship with a different sort of Gibbs. He couldn’t deny it.

He sat there for a long time, holding his half empty beer, just letting his mind wander, coming back and prodding at this option that Gibbs was giving him. He didn’t have to kill himself to try to get back to his own universe and that was a great weight off his shoulder. His odds of surviving such a spell was miniscule, and his odds of actually making it back to his own universe instead of ending up someplace else was actually much higher, even if he lived through the attempt. There were just too many unknowns because he’d been blasted here by a bullet to the _wuivre_, a bullet that held god knows what kind of enchantments because there was no way that had been a plain bullet. It was Ari. He was insane. That much was true in both universes. One option that he had had to discard early on was to try to duplicate the event but he wasn’t even sure if he could replicate the spells on Ari’s bullets, and there was no way Gibbs would actually shoot him in the neck to see if this thing would work. Tony didn’t actually have a death wish, and he was sure his team in his universe had killed their Ari and moved on from his apparent demise. Or disappearance. Same difference, really, when it came to magic sometimes.

And truth be told, maybe part of the reason why he didn’t think he would ever make it back to his own universe, even if he found the perfect spell for moving across universes, was that he didn’t think he had anything pulling him back there. Nothing from his supposed home universe was truly anchoring him there or calling him back there in any way. He’d been planning to leave NCIS anyway. Leave his Gibbs. Leave his team. Leave everything. So did he really want to put all that work into finding a way home when it really didn’t feel like much of a home? When, to be honest, this universe felt more like a home to him? Here, where Abby wanted him to go out to lunch with her, and where Kate and McGee were starting to feel like they were his friends, even though they knew him as their Tony’s cousin Damien. This universe, where people had cried at his counterpart’s funeral and so many had come – his frat brothers, LEOs from all different agencies and several police departments, as well as members of NCIS had come out full force. This was a universe where his counterpart had been buried next to Gibbs’ first wife and daughter, because this Gibbs had loved his Tony, even though they hadn’t been physically intimate. There was a beauty here that Tony couldn’t deny, and one that he hadn’t found in his own universe.

Maybe it wasn’t going to be a hard decision? He was already feeling so much lighter than he ever had in his old life, that maybe it wasn’t a bad thing to decide not just to stay here, but maybe to go on a date with Gibbs? Maybe he should try to do what he wanted, for once in his life? And given the identity that Abby was making up for him, he wouldn’t even have to leave law enforcement. Although he would have to study the laws of this universe closely to ensure he knew what was expected of him to make charges stick and send criminals to jail here. That would be fun. A new adventure. Plus, he was always going to be able to cheat, and tap into his powers to help him solve crimes. An advantage that would ultimately help the victims and their loved ones.

He thought that he might have already made his decision. He wondered what Gibbs would say if he called Fornell to see if the Feebs had an opening for someone like him. Because there was no way he wanted to leave law enforcement – that was not negotiable. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to fall into the trap of working for Gibbs, any Gibbs, ever again. It didn’t mean he didn’t want to maybe give this whole dating thing a chance. Gibbs had made it sound logical. And maybe he needed to let go of his past experiences with a different Gibbs, one who had never been kind to him.

Because this Gibbs? He was kind. And sweet. And maybe, Tony did want to get to know him better. Let them get to know each other.

Maybe they could be good together. Maybe they would be _great_ together. He wouldn’t know if he didn’t take the chance. Gibbs had opened the door and taken a step forward. He just needed to figure out if he wanted to take that next step with Gibbs.

He took a mouthful of beer and grimaced because it was too warm. After swallowing it down, he closed his eyes and breathed, channeling his magic, and the bottle cooled down in his hand. Smiling at it, he finished his now ice-cold beer, took a few deep breaths, and decided to go to bed. Tomorrow was another day. He put the rest of the six pack in the fridge and the empties in the recycling and went to get ready for bed.

It was dark and he was under the covers, sighing with exhaustion. He’d been burning the candle at both ends for way too many days and he really needed to sleep. Maybe for a couple days straight. Then he was going to go out and buy a new bed because this fucking tiny bed was no way for a man to live. He shook his head at imagining this universe’s Tony as a weird, sexually active yet scared of commitment monk.

Right before he fell asleep, the thought popped into his head. Should he wait three days before he called Gibbs to tell the man his answer? What did the Miss Manners of this universe say about this kind of thing?

Smiling faintly, he fell asleep before he could do anything else.

[](http://jillyjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Parallax_Cover_1k.jpg)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! 😁 I hope you guys enjoyed this story, despite the death of one Tony. Hopefully the other (magical) Tony made up for that somewhat.
> 
> I'm pretty exhausted and I feel like I didn't give the story my usual amounts of OCD-induced editing up to the very last minute, because I had to go on a work trip on short notice, and I just got home tonight, so I hope you will forgive me my less than usual attention to detail due to RL constraints clashing with challenge deadlines. 😔
> 
> The music I listened to was [Ghost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ3jysAh0QQ) by the Indigo Girls. It truly shaped a lot of Gibbs' emotions throughout this story.
> 
> I also used the scripts for the following NCIS episodes as a basis for some of what happened here. I watched the episodes, and then used the transcripts to add the details so some of the scenes in here are some form of the original dialogue, with all kinds of edits and additions and reassignments and whatnot. You can click on the following links to access each transcript:  
* [s02e23 Twilight](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=ncis&episode=s02e23)  
* [s03e01 Kill Ari Pt 1](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=ncis&episode=s03e01)  
* [s03e02 Kill Ari Pt 2](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=ncis&episode=s03e02)
> 
> Here are links to some reference materials that I used to write the story:  
* Celtic symbols: https://irisharoundtheworld.com/celtic-symbols/  
* More Celtic symbols: https://culturacolectiva.com/design/tattoos-celtic-symbols  
* Celtic deities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celtic_deities  
* Flowers and meanings: https://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/aboutflowers/flower-meanings  
* Individual piercing: https://images.app.goo.gl/wWByL8yAZ8U8ZBT5A 
> 
> The 'individual' piercing (described in Chapter 2) was something I decided to add after jilly used it in the Tony artwork. I loved it. If you read the first three chapters yesterday, I tweaked that a little tonight to include the description.
> 
> The title of the story was suggested by jilly and it really seemed to work with the story. [Parallax (from Ancient Greek παράλλαξις (parallaxis), meaning 'alternation')](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax):  
_(noun) the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g. through the viewfinder and the lens of a camera_  
You can think of symbolic ways to apply this word (I'm way too sleepy to get all philosophical right now).
> 
> My thanks go to my wonderful beta, [jesco0307](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesco0307/pseuds/jesco0307). Her feedback and edits were, as always, spot on, and helped make this story so much better. Thanks, jesco! ❤️ All remaining errors are my own.
> 
> Also, did you guys see ALL the fantastic artwork [jillyjames](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jilly) made for this story??? Wow! I absolutely loved it! You should definitely check out [jilly's web site](http://jillyjames.com/)! Thank you so much to jilly for the gorgeous and fabulous artwork. She made my sexy, tattooed up Tony real! 
> 
> And of course, huge thanks to [Jacie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacie/pseuds/Jacie) for organizing this challenge! Check out the This story is part of the [NCIS Big Bang Challenge](https://ncis-bang.livejournal.com/63350.html) on LiveJournal. This is the fourth time I've participated and I've enjoyed it every single time!
> 
> Hopefully y'all enjoyed my story. I'm going to go to bed now, so I will reply to all your comments in the morning when I"m not so dead. Thank you so much for all the kudos, comments and bookmarks. You guys are the best, and sure make an exhausted jane feel really good. Thank you ❤️❤️❤️
> 
> -j  
xoxo


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